CORNUCOPIANS CAN COUNT CARBON TOO. #GREENHORIZONS #COP26 #CARBONPRICES #COVIDPURPOSE #GREATRESET11/23/2020  Just by way of explanation by Profession I am a Chartered Surveyor and Valuer. I began my Career at Shell UK Limited where I was involved in the Tax Assessment of the St Fergus Gas Terminal in Peterhead. To Tax large oil industry plant and machinery open market valuations of Property Value based on open market transactions do not exist as for Property Rateable values based upon rentals. As Open market comparables do not exist, to calculate a property value for taxation purposes for large Capital Plant, a Valuation Technique called the contractors principle of Valuation is employed. The Contractors Principle of Valuation is a residual method of valuation which adds up all the qualifying input costs and then applies a discount rate to generate an annual economic rent, ( Net Present Value ) which can then be used to calculate the rating assessment. At Shell I did hundreds of these types of Valuations and the Largest such valuation was for the St Fergus Gas Terminal.( In excess of £300 million in the mid 1980's) Concepts such as Embodied energy also feed nicely back into measures of Levelized costs of electricity. Pulling these concepts of energy value as opposed to financial value into the equations should hopefully result in seeing what the problem we are trying to solve is?
Do we want to save Society or the financial system as it currently operates?Discount rates based upon the cost of Capital are pretty subjective , but it seems to me, that EROIE measures Levelised costs of Electricity production and so forth and a residual valuation approach can yield a good method by which to assess the Economic potential for future prosperity based upon access to energy. Energy and Capital are very different things. The best description of this dichotomy I have encountered is this from Carol Quigley in Tragedy and Hope, ”Thus, clearly, money and goods are not the same thing but are, on the contrary, exactly opposite things. Most confusion in economic thinking arises from a failure to recognize this fact. Goods are wealth which you have, while money is a claim on wealth which you do not have. Thus goods are an asset; money is a debt. If goods are wealth; money is not wealth, or negative wealth, or even anti-wealth. They always behave in opposite ways, just as they usually move in opposite directions. If the value of one goes up, the value of the other goes down, and in the same proportion.” Quigley Tragedy and hope. Energy and Money are different. REDEFINING FISCAL CONSERVATISM. THE TERRA/ENERGY BASED FISCAL UNIT. FÖRES AND LAGOM WHITE PAPER, BOUNDARY CONDITIONS FOR A FISCAL CONSERVATISM BASED UPON CIRCULAR ECONOMICS. PART ONE SCOPE. ⨊Före(s) The store of Value component of the föres, Lagom dynamic currency complex. The first two articles demonstrate a mistake in Logic engendered by treating energy assets as a Debt Based Financial Asset, Energy is either there or not there once you have nothing there is nothing you can not have less than no energy. Therefore any stock of energy must always be positive although if one adopts the Energy Cost of Energy measure, you may need to use more accessible Energy to extract untapped energy. On the Energy Returned on Energy invested Curve the current state of the art for this concept looks like this. http://euanmearns.com/eroei-for-beginners/  Energy Cost of Energy is explained here by Dr Tim Morgan.
SEEDS uses an alternative measure, ECoE (the Energy Cost of Energy), which expresses cost as a percentage of the gross energy accessed.Because the world economy is a closed system, ECoE is not directly analogous to ‘cost’ in the usual financial sense. Rather, it is an economic rent, limiting the choice we exercise over any given quantity of energy. If we have 100 units of energy, and the ECoE is 5%, we exercise choice (or ‘discretion’) over 95 units. If ECoE rises to 10%, we now have discretion over only 90 units, even though the gross amount remains 100.This is loosely analogous to personal prosperity. If someone’s income remains the same, but the cost of essentials rises, that person is worse off, even though income itself hasn’t changed. Understanding ECoEECoE evolves over time. In the early stages of any given resource, ECoE is driven downwards by geographic reach, and by economies of scale. Once maturity is reached, depletion takes over as the driver, pushing ECoE upwards. In the pre-maturity phase, technology accelerates the fall in ECoE driven by reach and scale. Post-maturity, technology acts to mitigate the rise caused by depletion. But – and this is often misunderstood – the capabilities of technology are limited to the envelope of the physical characteristics of the resource.  https://www.genfound.org/media/1374/pdf-generation-foundation-stranded-carbon-assets-v1.pdf ‘Carbon bubble’ coming that could wipe trillions from the global economy Demand for fossil fuels will decline in the near future with major macroeconomic and geopolitical consequences Date: June 4, 2018 Source: Radboud University Nijmegen Divestment and creative destruction The process of transition towards a low-carbon economy is now becoming inevitable, as policies supporting this change have been developed and gradually implemented for some time. “New efficiency standards imply that we do more with the same amounts of energy, as older, less efficient technologies are gradually phased out. The transition is therefore irreversible; however its pace can vary according to whether and how new climate policies are implemented.” The scientists conclude that further economic damage from a potential bubble burst could be avoided by decarbonising early. “Divestment is a prudential thing to do. We should be carefully looking at where we are investing our money.(1) For instance, much like companies, pension funds and other institutions currently invest in fossil-fuel assets. Following recommendations from central banks, commercial banks are increasingly looking at the financial risks of stranded fossil-fuel assets, even though their possible impacts have not yet been fully determined. Until now, observers mostly paid attention to the likely effectiveness of climate policies, but not to the ongoing and effectively irreversible technological transition. This level of ‘creative destruction’ appears inevitable now and must be carefully managed,” Mercure concludes.
(1)ED. This is the key misunderstanding, the whole basis of this analysis should look at Net Energy Surplus over cost of energy extraction, then in a real sense the Sentance , “We should be carefully looking at where we are investing our Energy ( qua, Energy )”, would have money taking the Debt based monetary unit as a referent renders the statement meaningless a per pro-energy capital allocation decisions.Story Source: Materials provided by Radboud University Nijmegen. Note: Content may be edited for style and length. Journal Reference: J.-F. Mercure, H. Pollitt, J. E. Viñuales, N. R. Edwards, P. B. Holden, U. Chewpreecha, P. Salas, I. Sognnaes, A. Lam, F. Knobloch. Macroeconomic impact of stranded fossil fuel assets. Nature Climate Change, 2018; DOI: 10.1038/s41558-018-0182-1 Here is a Graph of World energy use in terms of TerraWatt Hours,  My own analysis and synthesis of the World Debt Money economy and the world Energy economy is given below. I must say the Financial economy serves only one purpose and that is a one-time conversion reference point for explanatory purposes. The Financial System based on debt will, in time be recognised as and studied as an artefact of late-stage financialised Capitalism. Energy Cost of Energy, makes much more sense and tracking real energy wealth and prosperity if Tims hypothesis is correct, that Energy is the driver of prosperity, which I think he is, will see an energy-based unit of accounting for currencies adopted as a better standard or referent for Capital allocation decisions. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-fossil-fuel-consumption  Embodied energy cost of opportunity cost. Which would be a true metric of decision making where resource constraints involve mutually exclusive investment decisions. Debt in Energy terms would be borrowing future Energy and using it up so that it is not available in the future In a very great sense this Energy Future Budget is Unknown. We have Proven Reserves and so forth and existing known Generating and refining and conversion capacities but until a sensible measure of debt based upon known future energy resources and their rate of use are coupled with ideas of a Unit of Debt, in the sense of Using future supplies or reserves Now instead of at some point in the future the Notions of Debt in financial terms are meaningless. We do Know that all Debts and Credits do not sum to Zero in the existing system and this is due to the Principal Debt being issued without the Interest Element , it is from this simple fact that Money Scarcity exists as an idea and gives a notion then of a Time value of money expressed as a rate of Interest. GLOBAL PRIMARY ENERGY USE ASSOCIATED WITH PRODUCTION, CONSUMPTION AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE  15% of the energy use embodied in trade turns out to be induced by final consumption, and 85% is attributed to intermediate production https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320445428_Global_primary_energy_use_associated_with_production_consumption_and_international_trade I have spent a Week Assembling Data available through public API’s so that I can build a model of World Economy based upon Energy Generation and Energy Consumption. Most of all of that has already been done what has not been done is creating a Money that embodies embodied energy as its objective valuation basis, The Value basis of money is subjective and as a subjective phenomenon is also a variable. A Bugbear expressed and repeated in the pages of this Blog more than once. http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2017/08/renewableseroi-why-money-doesnt-cut-it.html Introduction to Technocracy – 1933 https://archive.org/details/introductiontotec00tech discussions — of ‘value,’ of fluctuating prices, of the gold standard, of changing interest rates, of items of pecuniary wealth which are at the same time items of debt — are merely discussions looking toward a readjustment of the factors which prevent them The problem of analysing political choices against the metric of a Monetary measure is the Money as a Thing is most certainly a Variable and as any good technologist, scientist or metrologist will tell you a unit of measurement has to be clearly defined and fixed. The dollar. He notes that it is a variable. Why anyone should attempt, on this earth, to use a variable as a measuring rod is so utterly absurd that he dismisses any serious consideration of its use in his study of what should be done. He also considers ‘price’ and ‘value’ and the fine- spun theories of philosophers and economists who have attempted to surround these terms with the semblance of meaning. These terms, like the monetary unit, may have had meaning to men in the past but they mean nothing whatsoever to the modern technologist. The standard of measurement is not relevant to the things measured; and the measuring rod and the things, measured as if they were stable, are all variables. This comparison of different energy solution uses ERIO https://festkoerper-kernphysik.de/Weissbach_EROI_preprint.pdf Abstract The Energy Returned on Invested, EROI, has been evaluated for typical power plants representing wind energy, photovoltaics, solar thermal, hydro, natural gas, biogas, coal and nuclear power. The strict exergy concept with no ”primary energy weighting”, updated material databases, and updated technical procedures make it possible to directly compare the overall efficiency of those power plants on a uniform mathematical and physical basis. Pump storage systems, needed for solar and wind energy, have been included in the EROI so that the efficiency can be compared with an ”unbuffered” scenario. The results show that nuclear, hydro, coal, and natural gas power systems (in this order) are one order of magnitude more effective than photovoltaics and wind power. http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2017/09/money-does-not-initiate-economic.html Click the Link Below and please read this book, written by a Physicist, Engineer and sadly now departed all round good egg Prof. Sir David MacKay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._C._MacKay Sustainable Energy - without the hot air Sustainable Energy – without the hot airby David MacKay http://www.withouthotair.com/Contents.html International Trade is relevant, the relevance economically is relevant at the EROI embodied energy level though. Money in International Trade is a Convenient Posit ( Quine)(1) What is important regarding that is that the receipt of currency can be exchanged for something tangible, the money receive is not an end in itself. Looked at in EROEI and embodied energy terms it actually makes your point crystal clear. That said its pretty clear to those who are objectively considering the point. (1)P.41 para 2. http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2018/03/energy-returned-on-energy-invested.html https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2017/04/14/93-the-prosperity-equation/ MMT’s ignorance of economic thought, May 24 at 11:10am Bill Mitchell has a new post “A surplus of trade discussions” responding to some of the criticisms of the MMT position on trade deficits (though he didn’t link to any of them, including my post “Some Preliminary Questions for MMT“). He opens with the proposition that “exports are a cost and imports are a benefit”, and reaches the following conclusion:
When it comes to trade, MMT focuses, initially on the real layer of the analysis.Thus it is undeniable (and I am surprised to read all those who are torturing themselves trying to deny it) – exports are a cost and imports are a benefit. Giving some real thing away is a cost. Getting some real thing is a benefit.That doesn’t equate, as I have been reading the last few weeks, in a conclusion that MMT’s preference is for a nation to have a current account deficit. It just states the obvious fact that exports, by definition, involve sacrificing real resources and depriving a nation of their use. Imports on the other hand clearly involve receiving final goods and services where the real resource sacrifice has been made by the exporting nation. In a world where we produce to consume – not for its own sake – then receiving goods and services is better (real terms) than sending them elsewhere.Steve Keen Responds. Since I was one of the ones denying Mitchell’s opening gambit—though there must have been other people “torturing themselves”, since all I noted in my post was that I disputed it as a premise—I had better reply now on this issue.I do not deny the proposition that “Giving some real thing away is a cost. Getting some real thing is a benefit”: that’s obvious in a materialist world. What I do deny is that this proposition has any relevance to either macroeconomics or trade theory. And I am not the first one to deny this: that honour goes to Karl Marx.This raises one of my major issues with MMT: advocates know their own economic logic very well, but they seem to have little knowledge of compatible precursors to their views (or even compatible contemporaries, like complexity theory). Consequently, whether they realise it or not, they often end up making arguments that would be right at home in a conventional Neoclassical textbook. These arguments are just as wrong in MMT hands as they are in Neoclassical ones.This “exports=cost, imports=benefit” MMT analysis of international trade is a classic case in point. There are at least three ways in which this MMT perspective is a backward step in relation to preceding enlightened work in economics: Standard Neoclassical work on the irrelevance of opportunity cost below full employment Marx’s arguments on the irrelevance of the seller’s utility in trade The extensive Post Keynesian research on declining marginal costs of production and economies of scale.INAPPLICABILITY OF OPPORTUNITY COST EXCEPT AT FULL EMPLOYMENT Embodied energy cost of opportunity cost. Which would be a true metric of decision making where resource constraints involve mutually exclusive investment decisions. INAPPLICABILITY OF OPPORTUNITY COST EXCEPT AT FULL EMPLOYMENT
End of Ownership, Circular Economy Proof of Brain and Primary, Intermediary and Consumption Energy Tokens. A Framework Evolves.
Here is the Final Draft Spreadsheet available to download. ( Work In Progress)
Go to Sheet 3 .
 POST NAVIGATIONHere is my Working Draft spreadsheet for the synthesis of the Energy Production of the world in kilowatt-hours and the Debt Based world Financial economy based upon local dollar parity currency exchange rate basis from the CIA World Fact Book.
Do Americans Know How Weird and Extreme Their Collapse is Getting?Even the Dark Ages Would Laugh at Where We’re Going
Is it not really just another species of American Exceptionalism, is it perhaps White American Supremacy. With respect to Exceptionalism rather than the theme of this article, it is ubiquitous in societies going back through history. We find it in Plato's Noble Lie, We find it in The God Pharaohs in Egypt, Chosenness is perhaps the oldest form of Idolatry.
We find it in Calvinism in the Unconditional election and we find it in Judaism. Far from being sui generis to this time and place in history, it is ubiquitous.
All that said it is, of course, evident that the USA has had a tremendous decline in its Civil Society and Presidents Trumps approach seems to be to double down on American Exceptionalism and America First, as one Green Party Wag said about Brexit, It is an imaginary solution to Real problems the same could be said about American Exceptionalism, White Amerian Supremacy and to Netanyahu Zionism.
The foundations of the cause of the current discontents lie in two things, Misallocation of Financial Capital due to late-stage financial Capitalism.
The Misallocation of Capital is also compounded by the Logical mistake of Mistaking Money for wealth. Prosperity is founded upon Human Creativity and Conversion of Energy neither of which are present in the calibration of the Debt Based financial unit of account.
Here we see the real exceptionalism at play in modern America, The Washington consensus and the Globalised Neo-Liberal project. The Rise has been the Rise of the Barbarians at the gate of The masters of the Universe coupled with their Goons, the Military Industrial Complex.
So in Brexit, In MAGA and in White supremacy we have imaginary solutions to real problems.
The Answer to the problem is to put the Conservatism back into Fiscal Conservatism re-defined into an Energy-Based Currency Unit, Bingo!
Related posts.
Simon–Ehrlich wager From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigationJump to search The Simon–Ehrlich wager was a 1980 scientific wager between business professor Julian L. Simon and biologist Paul Ehrlich, betting on a mutually agreed-upon measure of resource scarcity over the decade leading up to 1990. The widely-followed contest originated in the pages of Social Science Quarterly, where Simon challenged Ehrlich to put his money where his mouth was. In response to Ehrlich's published claim that "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000" Simon offered to take that bet, or, more realistically, "to stake US$10,000 ... on my belief that the cost of non-government-controlled raw materials (including grain and oil) will not rise in the long run." Simon challenged Ehrlich to choose any raw material he wanted and a date more than a year away, and he would wager on the inflation-adjusted prices decreasing as opposed to increasing. Ehrlich chose copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten. The bet was formalized on September 29, 1980, with September 29, 1990, as the payoff date. Ehrlich lost the bet, as all five commodities that were bet on declined in price from 1980 through 1990, the wager period.[1] . Leave a Reply. |
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