You wouldn’t think so if you read recent press reports. Just like this time last year, the global press is bombarding the public with alarming reports coming from the bottom of the world. From the Discovery Channel on April 28th, 2009 “Huge Ice Shelf Breaks From Antarctica, Fractures.” From National Geographic News on April 30th, 2009 “Giant Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapses.” From Reuters on April 28th, 2009, “New York City-sized Ice Collapses off Antarctica.”

Exactly one year ago, similar stories circulated, and if anything, they were more alarming. On March 25th, 2008, the BBC reported “Antarctic Ice Hangs by a Thread,” a result, they stated, of “unprecedented global warming.” But these reports, both last year and this year, are talking about the same ice shelf - the Wilkins Ice Shelf, an insignificant bit of floating ice that is located on the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Didn’t it break up last year? How many times do we recycle the alarm over the seasonal melting of the same few thousand square miles of floating ice (ice that floats cannot contribute to sea level rise), off a continent that exceeds five million square miles in area?

Apparently over and over. An excellent analysis posted on April 17th, 2009 by Ron de Haan entitled “The Antarctic Wilkins Ice Shelf Collapse: Media recycles photos and storylines from previous years,” documents how the Wilkins Ice Shelf has been reported by the mainstream media to be ominously collapsing every year now since 1999. Haan also provides satellite photography back as far as 1993 showing the end-of-summer thaws and mid-winter maximums for the Wilkins Ice Shelf. Not much has changed over the past 15 years. Thank goodness for the blogosphere to help us accurately assess the cryosphere!

The assumption in all these stories that report on the Wilkins Ice Shelf, and other melting ice around the Antarctic Peninsula, is that global warming is the cause, and that they are representative of a general melt occurring throughout Antarctica. And if this were true, this would be alarming, since 90% of the world’s land based ice is in Antarctica. So is the ocean warming around Antarctica, and is Antarctica’s overall total mass decreasing?
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GLOBAL SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE ANOMALY - APRIL 2009

As of April 2009, sea surface temperatures surrounding Antarctica are mostly colder than average. (Image: NOAA)

The answer to both of these questions is almost certainly no. As this recent imagery from NOAA indicates, the southern ocean is actually colder than average. Except for a few areas directly south of the Indian Ocean, and in the area south of Patagonia and surrounding the Antarctic Peninsula, the rest of the ocean surrounding Antarctica - virtually all of the South Pacific and South Atlantic - is cooler than average. This data indicates no reason to believe ocean temperatures are causing overall loss of ice mass in the Antarctic; with the exception of the insignificant quantity of ice on the Antarctic Peninsula, they suggest the opposite.
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CURRENT SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE SEA ICE AREA

As of May 2009, sea ice surrounding Antarctica is about 1.0 million square kilometers greater than average. (Image: University of Illinois)

What about the ice mass of Antarctica? Along with land based ice, which can raise sea levels when melted into the ocean, another significant indicator of polar temperature is the extent of floating sea ice. As the above table prepared by researchers at the University of Illinois indicates, the actual sea ice surrounding Antarctica is well above average. The black line represents the last 12 months of sea ice area, based on satellite data. You can see the sea ice reached a peak of 15 million square kilometers around September, during the peak of the southern winter. You can see it dropped to a low of 2 million square kilometers in mid-February, at the height of the southern summer. Currently the sea ice surrounding Antarctica is 7 million square kilometers and rising. The red line, however, is what is significant, because the red line indicates whether or not the sea ice is above or below the historical norm. And as you can see, as of May 2009, Antarctic sea ice is about 1.0 million square kilometers above normal. 

Just like last year, to assist in the research for this post I contacted Dr. Roger Pielke Sr., a climatologist at the University of Colorado whose blog www.climatesci.org is one of the most balanced forums and respected sources of technical information on global climate anywhere. In response to my inquiry, he wrote the following:  “The sea ice around the continent is far above average (ref. UIUC). Also, note the colder than average sea surface temperatures around Antarctic (ref. NOAA). If the media is going to discuss the Wilkens Ice Shelf, they should also discuss this other data. The expansion of the sea ice coverage implies a cooling.”

Related Posts:

Reforesting Reduces Droughts
Global Warming & Greentech
Pessimistic Reporting, Optimistic Data
How Much for a Degree?
Climate Science
Antarctica’s Ice Mass
Aquabirds & Aquabuoys
Arctic Cooling on Schedule
Greenland’s Ice Melting Slowly
Greenland’s Ice Cap
Antarctic Ice

A recent article in New Scientist by Fred Pearce entitled “Rainforests may pump winds worldwide” describes a new meteorological theory wherein vast forests play a critical role in generating winds that pump water around the world through the atmosphere. Here is how Pearce summarizes this theory:

“How can forests create wind? Water vapour from coastal forests and oceans quickly condenses to form droplets and clouds… the gas [from this evaporation] takes up less space as it turns to liquid, lowering local air pressure. Because evaporation is stronger over the forest than over the ocean, the pressure is lower over coastal forests, which suck in moist air from the ocean. This generates wind that drives moisture further inland. The process repeats itself as the moisture is recycled in stages, moving towards the continent’s heart. As a result, giant winds transport moisture thousands of kilometres into the interior of a continent.

The volumes of water involved in this process can be huge. More moisture typically evaporates from rainforests than from the ocean. The Amazon rainforest, for example, releases 20 trillion litres [20 cubic kilometers] of moisture every day.

‘In conventional meteorology the only driver of atmospheric motion is the differential heating of the atmosphere. That is, warm air rises,” Makarieva and Gorshkov told New Scientist. But, they say, “Nobody has looked at the pressure drop caused by water vapour turning to water.’” 

This theory, which is somewhat out of the mainstream, is nonetheless compatible with well known but less ambitious connections between forests and precipitations. In our November 9th, 2006 post entitled “Reforesting Brings Rain,” we reference an MIT study “Deforestation, Desertification and Drought,” wherein the authors conclude “deforestation along the southern coast of West Africa (e.g., in Nigeria, Ghana and Ivory Coast) may result in complete collapse of monsoon circulation, and a significant reduction of regional rainfall.”

The role forests play in alleviating droughts and moderating weather may have more to do with their ability to store and transpirate massive volumes of water than their role as “carbon sinks.” (Photo: NASA)

In our post of November 30th, 2007 entitled “Hydraulic Redistribution” we reference a UC Berkeley study “Deep-rooted plants have much greater impact on climate than experts thought,” which contends that rainforest trees, through hydraulic lift (energy provided by evaporation of water out of the leaves) “transpirate” sufficient volumes of water into the atmosphere to increase and moderate precipitation, which impacts the climate globally.  Transpiration from rainforests add moisture to clouds blowing in from the ocean, giving them critical mass to release evaporation from the ocean as rainfall, adding to the reserves of land based fresh water and reducing incidence of droughts.

It is important to understand that climate change, such as it is, refers to three distinct and only somewhat overlapping phenomenon; global warming, extreme weather, and droughts. And in all three cases, particularly in the case of droughts, these studies are all suggesting the cause of undesirable climate change, and the cure, may have more to do with the health and extent of our global forest canopy, and less to do with anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

Earlier this week, on April 15th, 2009, not coincidentally the day each year when tax returns are due from America’s workers, there were “tea parties” held throughout the United States - approximately 2,000 separate events, some drawing over 10,000 people. It is probably accurate to estimate several hundred thousand people participated.

In Sacramento, California, at what was reputed to be one of the biggest events, there were over 5,000 people in attendance at peak, but given the duration of the event, well over three hours, and the apparent turnover of people arriving and departing, probably closer to 10,000 people actually participated.

Looks like grass-roots to me. (Photo: John Gewalt)

Press coverage of these events in mainstream media - apart from Fox News - was somewhat cursory. Part of the reason for this was the dubious fact that Fox News not only covered the event, but actively promoted the event for weeks prior, and sent many of their star correspondants to actually speak at some of the larger events. Is Fox reporting news or creating news? This is a fair question.

In the New York Times on April 16th, in a column entitled “Tea Parties Forever,” Paul Krugman leveled several observations and accusations, including these: Obama is NOT a socialist, these events were NOT grassroots events, and that these “tea parties have been the subject of considerable ridicule, and rightly so.”

Huffington Post commentator Drew Westen, also in an April 16th column entitled “The Five Strands of Conservatism, Why the GOP is Unraveling,” said “When you get caught gutting the regulations that had kept us for 70 years from another stock market crash like the crash of 1929 and another collapse of the banking system like the one that occurred during the Great Depression, and when your policies throw millions of people out of their homes, jobs, retirement, and doctors’ offices, the next bottle of elixir you sell is not likely to fly off the shelf…”

Despite the active role of Fox News in making this event happen, however, despite Paul Krugman’s scorn, or Drew Westen’s suggestion that only Republicans caused the economic mess we’re in today, the concerns of yesterday’s tea party protesters are valid. The United States is indeed at risk of overreacting to the current economic crisis by expanding the role of government when what has been at issue was never the size of government, but the quality of government.

No matter who caused this event to happen, and no matter who were there, in Sacramento the roars from the Tea Party being held on the west side of the Capitol could easily be heard on the grass to the east of the Capitol. And for the most part, along with Democrats and media professionals, California’s Republican politicians were nowhere to be found.

The aim of democratic politics is to strike a balance between legitimate but conflicting interests. It is therefore inaccurate and unhelpful when left of center commentators mock the notion that America might be drifting towards socialism, or that socialism isn’t so bad anyway. It is also innacurate and unhelpful to define one of the fundamental planks of the Republican Party, fiscal conservatism, as part of a totally discredited whole.

An editorial in the New Yorker on March 16th, 2009, made an observation somewhat representative of this leftist, triumphalist mentality, when it wrote “Republican jibes that the [U.S. 2009] budget was ’socialist’ should be treated with the respect they deserve, which is to say none…”

A more constructive editorial in the April 2009 edition of Harper’s, in an editorial entitled “Shine, Perishing Republicans,” by Garret Keizer, includes this gem, “These two imperatives, that of self-reliance and social responsibility, of the Republican heart and the Democratic heart in their purest forms, are the crux of any sustainable community.” In recognizing that moral worth emanates from both sides of the political spectrum, Harper’s has credibility.

Socialism is real, it can creep into a society gradually, and when fully realized it is tyranny, orchestrated by credentialed opportunists and nomenklatura of all stripes, and it begins by embracing increasing sectors of the economy, and we all disagree only as to where one might identify the tipping point. One of the most insidious, to-date effectively invisible agents of socialism is environmentalism in general, and global warming fear in particular. It is absurd and only self-serving to suggest that socialism, fascism, communism, or any other authoritarian ‘ism might not be as likely to originate from the political left as from the right.

Self reliance and social responsibility, along with fiscal conservatism, are values that any party and any successful policy agenda can and should embrace. The value of environmentalism cannot be viewed apart from, in its application, compatibility with pluralistic economic growth, individual initiative and expression, and private property rights. The tea parties of April 15th, regardless of their provenance, reflected genuine values necessary for any sustainable community.

Published in 1968 ”The Population Bomb” became an enormously influential book, postulating, among other things, that humanity’s population growth, at current rates of expansion, would within perilously few centuries become a spherical ball of human flesh expanding at the speed of light in all directions into the universe. Like other such doomsday tracts, the Population Bomb extrapolated select demographic trends into the future, and predicted catastrophic shortages - land, food, energy, water, even the air itself.

Now we know better. We know, for example, that greater overall prosperity combined with female literacy - both ineluctable trends - lead to declining human populations, not an exploding population.  Within the next century, humanity’s most likely demographic challenge will be how to maintain economic and scientific vitality amidst an aging and declining human population. We know that human population is unlikely to ever exceed 10.0 billion, and that most people seem to voluntarily prefer living in fairly dense urban areas. Despite the apocalyptic and emotionally compelling visions of doomsaying artists and analysts, from Soylent Green to the Population Bomb, these Malthusian messages are incorrect.

With respect to energy, for example, even though easily extracted light crude may becoming somewhat scarce in the world, at $100+/BBL, our planet’s remaining supply of fossil fuel is in no way limited by any realistic constraints. As we document in “Fossil Fuel Reality,” at 1.0 quintillion BTUs of energy consumption per year - 100 million BTUs per person per year on a 10 billion person planet, we have a 300 year supply of likely fossil fuel reserves. This clearly affords us plenty of time to discover and deploy cheap fusion power, or whatever.

With water the argument of the Malthusians remains more credible, at least on the surface. Water is the “new oil,” and pundits predict wars over water as humanity’s industrializing multitudes relentlessly consume more water than ever. The raw materials of prosperity are energy and water, and there are already alarming examples of regional water scarcity that could disrupt the lives and delay the economic development for billions of people. Nonetheless the Malthusians are wrong about water, too.

Ethiopian raindancers - now joined with the raindancers of technology & free enterprise. (Photo: Wikipedia)

For thousands of years, human societies turned to raindancers who would perform their sacred rites in an attempt to bring on livegiving rains. But to address the water needs of 10 billion thirsty humans it is not necessary to only bring on the raindancers of antiquity - we now have several new promising technologies that will deliver water abundance at a global scale.

Desalination is a cost-effective, energy-efficient option for many water challenged regions - it can offer a backup source of water as well as a less expensive source of water. Using California’s Los Angeles basin as an example, a desalination plant constructed for $5.0 billion dollars could desalinate 1.0 cubic kilometers of water per year from the California Channel, enough water to satisfy the urban residential needs of 5.0 million Angelenos (ref. Desalination Costs). And the perhaps 5-to-1 waste water brine could easily be safely dispersed by outfall pipes running well into the California Channel, where more than 20 sverdrups (one Sverdrup equals 35 thousand cubic kilometers of water) of ocean water per year is passed along the coast by the California current.

The energy to desalinate water, 2.0 kilowatt-hours per cubic meter, is less than the amount of energy necessary to move, for example, up to 6.0 cubic kilometers of water per year over the Tehachapi Mountains (a lift of about 700 meters), from California’s Central Valley into the Los Angeles basin. That is, at somewhere between 500 and 700 meters of lift, it takes more energy to pump water over a mountain than it takes to desalinate an equivalent quantity from the ocean.

Another technological raindance, again using California as an example, is seasonal runoff harvesting. During even routine droughts, especially now that California’s policymakers intend their state to host up to 50 million residents within a couple of decades, Californian’s fret over finding enough water for the burgeoning annual needs of environment, agriculture, industry, and residents. But even during droughts, often during spring, there can be significant torrential storms that will each introduce cubic kilometer quantities of runoff, temporarily overwhelming streams and rivers downstream from reservoirs. If anything, this runoff often can seriously disrupt ecosystems, and should instead be captured and sequestered. At the same time, hydrologists estimate there are at least 10.0 cubic kilometers of aquifer storage already identified in California, with far more storage than that potentially available. California needs to develop systems to harvest runoff and refill her acquifers. In addition to percolation ponds and direct injection facilities, this particular raindance will require massive construction of weirs and holding ponds, aquaducts, pipes, and pumping systems (ref. California’s Water System).

Reuse and recycling technologies deliver additional raindancing enablers of water abundance. The potential of water reuse and recycling technologies is only beginning to be tapped, and the proliferation of these technologies is only beginning. Closely tied with these advances is the phenomenon of miniaturization and decentralization, whereby water harvesting, storage, reuse and recycling technologies can be implemented to create a water-positive usage profile at the building scale, at the scale of a community, or at the scale of a mega-city. Water, like energy, has the potential to be realized in an autarkic mode, and hence can make any building, community, or city able to elect to live off-grid or on-grid.

Last but not least are the raindancers of the market, where a well-regulated water grid, of sorts, operates like an energy grid, with spot prices and as much fungibility as can be cost-effectively facilitated.  Water shortages need never occur if there is a well-established market-oriented grid for water supply and delivery among a pluralistic assortment of water suppliers and consumers, using the entire array of new raindancing technologies.  A grid of exchange and delivery, where for each ton of Alfalfa or Rice not grown, for example, residential users purchase the water instead at a fair price, and within the arbitrage of such transactions are extracted revenues to finance increasingly advanced water infrastructure.

The essense of the Malthusian fallacy is the notion that human innovation cannot create abundance, cannot alleviate all needs. As long as the spark of individual creativity is not squelched by the vested interests of those who only benefit from extrapolations of the status-quo, abundance in all things is our destiny.

The prevailing challenge facing humanity when confronted with resource constraints is not that we are running out of resources, but how we will adapt and create new and better solutions to meet the needs that currently are being met by what are arguably scarce or finite resources. If one accepts this premise, that we are not threatened by diminishing resources, but rather by the possibility that we won’t successfully adapt and innovate to create new resources, a completely different perspective on resource scarcity and resource policies may emerge.

Across every fundamental area of human needs, history demonstrates that as technology and freedom is advanced, new solutions evolve to meet them. Despite tragic setbacks of war or famine that provide examples to contradict this optimistic claim, overall the lifestyle of the average human being has inexorably improved across the centuries (ref. Humanity’s Prosperous Destiny). While it is easy to examine specific consumption patterns today and suggest we now face a tipping point wherein shortages of key resources will overwhelm us, if one examines key resources one at a time, there is a strong argument that such a catastrophe, if it does occur, will be the result of war, corruption, or misguided adherance to counterproductive ideologies, and not because there weren’t solutions readily available through human creativity and advancing technology.

Energy, water and land are, broadly speaking, the three resources one certainly might argue are finite and must be scrupulously managed. But in each case, a careful examination provides ample evidence to contradict this claim. As we document in the post Fossil Fuel Reality, known reserves of fossil fuel could provide enough energy to serve 100% of the energy requirements of civilization at a total annual rate of consumption twice what is currently consumed worldwide; there is enough fossil fuel on the planet to provide 1.0 quintillion BTUs of energy per year for the next 300 years. In addition to fossil fuel there are proven sources of energy such as nuclear power, and potential sources of energy such as solar, geothermal, and biomass, that have the potential to scale up to provide comparable levels of power production. With these many energy alternatives, combined with relentless improvements in energy efficiency, it is difficult to imagine human civilization ever running out of energy.

Water is a resource that appears finite, and indeed in many regions of the world the challenge of meeting projected water needs appears more daunting than the challenge of producing adequate energy. But water is not necessarily finite. There are countless areas throughout the world where desalination technology can provide water in large quantities - already nearly 2% of the world’s fresh water is obtained through desalination, and for the large urban users, desalination is affordable and requires a surprisingly small energy input. Another way to provide abundant water is to redirect large quantities of river water via interbasin transfers from water rich areas to water poor areas. Finally, water is never truly used up, it is continuously recycled, and by treating and reusing water, particularly in urban areas, there should never be water scarcity. (ref. India’s Water Future, Arctic to Aral, Affordable Desalination, California’s Water System, Sverdrups & Brine, and Decentralized Wastewater Treatment.)

The question of finding adequate land for humans is clearly different from that of finding energy or water, since unlike energy or water, land is truly finite. But even here, key trends indicate land is now becoming more abundant, not less abundant. In 2007 the population of humans became more than 50% concentrated in cities, and within the next 25 years this concentration is expected to grow to 75%. Humans, in general, prefer living in urban environments, and this massive voluntary migration to cities from rural areas is depopulating landscapes faster than what remains of human population growth will fill them. This seismic shift in population patterns, combined with high yield crops, aquaculture, and urban high-rise agriculture, promises a decisive and very positive shift from land scarcity to land abundance in the next 25-50 years. (ref. Sustainable High Density, Skyscraper Farms, India’s Green Future, Biofuel Feedstock, and Green Abundance.)

Human population growth, along with increasing per capita standards of living, taken at face value, obviously could suggest we are racing towards disaster. But as noted, resources to accomodate greater rates of overall human consumption are more resilient than is commonly accepted. And, crucially, most of human population growth has already occurred. The welcome reality of female emancipation, female literacy, and increasing general prosperity is causing human cultures all over the world, one by one, to shift from rapid population growth to negative population growth. The demographic challenge we must prepare for is not too many people, but too many old people. Our long-term challenge is not resource scarcity, but how to create robust economic growth on a planet where humans have an ever-increasing average age, and a population in slow numeric decline.

If one accepts the possibility that humanity is not on a collision course with resource scarcity, entirely new ways of looking at policy options are revealed. Rather than attempting to manage demand, based on the premise that supplies are finite, we might also manage supply by increasing production. While, for example, utility pricing might still be somewhat progressive, if we assume resources will not run out, it doesn’t have to be punitive. If someone wishes to use more energy or water than their neighbor, if their pricing isn’t so punitive as to effectively ration their consumption, but instead is only moderately progressive, then overconsumption leads to higher profit margins at the utility, which in-turn finances more investment in supplies.

Another consequence of rejecting the malthusian conventional wisdom is a new understanding of what may truly motivate many powerful backers of the doomsday lobby. By limiting consumption through claiming resources are perilously scarce and by extracting them we may destroy the earth, the vested interests who control the means of production will tighten their grip on those means. Instead of pluralistically investing in this last great leap forward to build megacities and infrastructure for the future - in the process extracting raw materials that can be either recycled or are renewable - the public entities and powerful corporations who benefit from scarcity will raise prices and defer investment. It is the interests of the emergent classes, whether they are entrepreneurs in prosperous, advanced economies, or the aspiring masses in destitute nations, who are harmed the most by the malthusian notion of inevitable scarcity.

Abundance is a choice, and it is a choice the privileged elite must make - in order for humanity to achieve abundance, the elites must accept the competition of disruptive technologies, the competition of emerging nations, and a vision of environmentalism that embraces resource development and rejects self-serving anti-growth alarmist extremism. The irony of our time is that the policies of socialism and extreme environmentalism do more harm than good to both ordinary people and the environment, while enabling wealthy elites to perpetuate their position of privilege at the same time as they embrace the comforting but false ideology of scarcity.

Being an environmentalist should not require rejecting free market solutions, or accepting global warming alarmism. (Photo: EcoWorld)

In a briefing last week General Motors reaffirmed their commitment to the launch of the Chevy Volt by late 2010. The primary purpose of this briefing was to discuss the benefits of lithium battery technology as well as the reasons for their choice of LG Chem to produce the first generation of batteries for the Volt. Several points are worth noting:

GM is completing what will be the largest automotive battery lab in the U.S., and they intend to maintain in-house manufacturing capacity to integrate the battery cells into modules and complete battery systems. This gives GM more flexibility to choose cell suppliers for their 2nd and 3rd generation extended range electric vehicles, and lets them have complete control over how the battery interacts with the power management system of the vehicle. The fact GM is keeping 100% of the battery integration in-house illustrates the centrality of the battery in electric vehicles.

Another interesting point made was the reusability of the battery cells. Apparently these batteries, which are designed to last the life of the vehicle, can be reprocessed and recycled for use in a new battery in a new vehicle. One question not answered during this briefing was whether or not lithium resources globally are sufficient to supply these batteries for a global automotive fleet. So we did some digging:

According to a 2006 study by William Tahil of Meridian International Resource entitled “The Trouble With Lithium,” there are 13.4 million tons of lithium extractable from various raw minerals, primarily lithium carbonate. According to R. Keith Evans, in a March 2008 study entitled “Lithium Abundance - World Lithium Reserves,” there are 28.4 million tons of lithium extractable from known reserves worldwide. In the Wikipedia entry on Lithium, 30.0 million tons of lithium are apparently currently available.
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Lithium ingots with a thin layer of black oxide tarnish (Photo: Wikipedia)

To determine how many vehicles these varying quantities of lithium reserves might supply with battery material, it is necessary to determine how many kilograms of lithium are required per kilowatt-hour of storage, as well as how many kilowatt-hours the average electric vehicle’s battery will require.

According to Tahil’s report, about .3 kg of lithium are required per kWh of battery storage. In an interesting 2009 battery discussion on Seeking Alpha, it is noted that about .26 kg of lithium are required per kWh or storage. In terms of kWh required per vehicle, it depends - the Volt, which is an extended range electric vehicle (containing an onboard gasoline powered generator to supply additional electricity to the motor), only requires a 16 kWh battery. The Tesla Roadster, by contrast, has no backup power system, and requires a 53 kWh battery. Given the Tesla Roadster is a lightweight, two seat vehicle, a larger EV without backup power might require an even larger battery, or live with shorter range. Complicating this further is the possibility of battery swapping stations, meaning that for every EV on the road, a supply of available charged batteries will also need to be present.

Nonetheless, interesting conclusions can be drawn using these various figures. Assume there are 20 million tons of lithium that can be extracted from known reserves, and assume, based on a mixture of extended range EVs requiring smaller batteries alongside EVs depending purely on larger batteries - i.e., assume an average battery storage per EV of 30 kilowatt-hours. Finally, assume .275 kilograms of lithium are required for each kilowatt-hour of storage. If you run these numbers, it appears we can build 2.42 billion EVs before we run out of known lithium reserves.

Not only is this a reassuring calculation for those of us who are enthusiastic about the electrification of the automobile, but it is a static projection, which like all static extrapolations, completely fails to take into account the future potential of humans to adapt and innovate. Should supplies of lithium falter, there are alternative battery chemistries already being developed. Alternatively, the extended range design with backup electricity generating capacity could become the dominant engineering solution for vehicles, meaning the average battery size could be much smaller. There should never be enduring shortages of any fundamental human need, energy, water, food, shelter, or transportation, because our capacity to invent new solutions always exceeds the rate at which we deplete resources necessary for existing solutions.

It would be an understatement to say we’ve been accused of taking controversial positions on environmental issues - smart growth, global warming, government reform, fossil fuel and nuclear power, to name a few. The problem, however, is these positions are not adopted out of some pathological need to be contrarian, they spring from genuine conviction based on substantial research and thoughtful deliberation.

To keep all this contrarianism in perspective, there is a quote from Mark Twain worth repeating, he said “a cynic sees the cost of everything and the value of nothing.” And being mindful of this quote we respect those who adhere to the conventional wisdom on many of these issues. It is ridiculous to suggest there is no value in the concerns they express, or the policies they advocate. The challenge is to attempt to express the other side of these issues when the other side doesn’t lend itself as easily to emotional appeals. The challenge is to continue to espouse a contrarian point of view despite being easily typecast as having no concern whatsoever for these values that seem so easily fulfilled by following the crowd.

For example, urban planning is an area that truly encompasses many of the values of environmentalism. And in the name of “smart growth,” urban planners have succeeded in creating policy that has drawn lines around our cities, “urban service boundaries,” which make it nearly impossible to initiate new home construction outside these lines. While the purpose of these boundaries is ostensibly to protect open space, farmland and wilderness habitat, not only are those goals only marginally fulfilled, but other negative unintended consequences abound. Consider:

(1) Creating these greenbelts of protected open space mean instead of leapfrog development, you have super-leapfrog development. People who want to get out of the city now build and purchase homes on the other side of the greenbelt. Instead of suburbs on the perimeter of cities, you have exurbs, entire new cities, constructed just beyond the protected areas.

(2) Homes within these cities are concentrated onto tiny lots in order to get as many people into each new development as possible. Often these new developments are imposed in the middle of semi-rural suburbs where the way of life for the people already living there is destroyed.

(3) These dense new neighborhoods are designed to be “pedestrian friendly,” but what they really are is car unfriendly. There is no room to park, inadequate roads, and super expensive light rail that most people can’t make practical use of.

(4) The winners in this smart growth are not the people who want affordable homes, or the environmentalists who want open space. The winners are those land owners lucky enough to have property within these arbitrary boundaries where growth is permitted, and the public sector employees who keep development within their jurisdictions, and collect property taxes and fees on artificially inflated home values.

The original “smart growth” community, the township of Soweto in South Africa.

As we have calculated countless times, the impact in California of unrestricted suburban growth is not nearly as dire as it sounds.

California, for example, has 40,000 square miles of farmland. If California’s population were to grow to 50 million in the next couple of decades - something that is certainly possible - and if every one of these 13 million newcomers were to live in a new home on a one acre lot, four people per home, it would only consume 5,078 square miles, or about 13% of Calfornia’s farmland. That is an absolute worst case, and extremely unlikely. California’s total area is 158,000 square miles, meaning if every new household were on an acre, disbursed randomly, these 13 million people would only use up 3% of California’s land. Urban sprawl, at least in California’s case, is a myth.

Moreover, most people don’t want to live on an acre. Most people actually seem to prefer high density living. Urban planning and zoning has put far too much of a premium, however, on enforcing “smart growth” in the form of urban service boundaries instead of market driven development.

Often the point is made by the smart growth crowd that it is unaffordable to build the infrastructure for large suburban development. This is only partly true. First of all, retrofitting the energy, water and sewer service to semi-rural suburbs that suddenly have ultra-dense new neighborhoods imposed on them is much more expensive than starting from scratch on raw land. Secondly, the resources and the labor to build new roads would be far less expensive if environmentalists would stop blocking development of new mines and quarries, if government permits weren’t outrageously expensive, and if “prevailing wage” laws weren’t raising the cost of labor to prohibitive levels. Nobody is against paying decent wages - but the current system awards extremely lucrative jobs to a privileged few, while millions of additional construction jobs are financially infeasible and willing hands find no work. And of course, homes are now completely unaffordable. The idea that infrastructure to unclog our roads and bring home prices down to earth is too expensive is also a myth.

“Smart growth,” California style, if anything, has even smaller yards.

Finally, there is the notion that “greenhouse gasses” will be increased if people live further from the urban centers. There are several ways to debunk this concern.

First of all, a growing number of us are realizing there is less than meets the eye with respect to “greenhouse gas.” But even if this concerns you, consider how much less emissions occur when cars aren’t stuck in traffic, idling for hours every day, by the millions, because we piled everyone on top of each other in ultra-dense “smart growth” communities, and built light rail that hardly anyone uses instead of widening our roads and allowing suburban growth. Also, consider how rapidly the automobile is becoming ultra efficient and clean. The idea that automobile use is unsustainable and must be curtailed is perhaps the most cruel myth of all.

The two images in this post are telling. One is from Sacramento, and is taken from a model “smart growth” community. The other is from Soweto, once the poster child for the most chilling, brutal warehouse for human beings on the planet. Other than somewhat larger individual homes, with presumably better amenities, can you tell them apart? Is this the only affordable option you want left for you, if you want to live in a detached single family home? This is the brave new world we are building in the name of green, green, green uber alles. Perhaps nuance, contrarian views, property rights along with collective zoning, individual freedom along with social imperatives, less planning, more chaos, even that horrible toxic thing called a “free market” is not such a bad part of the political puzzle, after all. With even our most cherished beliefs, there is value in balance, value in seeing the other side of the story.

Related posts:

Principles of New Suburbanism
Lower Density, Please?
Why Homes Aren’t Affordable
Leapfrog Infill
California’s Land Fight
Infill Extremism