Apocalypse is canceled

First quote (very long, but very important, which I quote in the abbreviation):

“The entry of the world into a new era has led to the fact that it has become extremely crowded and hurried. The most active development took place in large cities such as London, Paris, New York and Chicago ... and half of the growth occurred in the last twenty years of the century. However, as these huge masses of the population (together with their property) moved from one place to another, a problem arose. The main means of transportation was the cause of a number of side effects, known among economists as negative external factors: these include traffic jams, excessively high insurance rates and too many traffic accidents that resulted in victims ... There was a problem of air pollution with toxic emissions that threatened both the environment and human health.

Do you think we are talking about cars? Nothing like this. We are talking about horses ... At the turn of the 20th century, about 200,000 horses worked in New York alone - about one horse for every 17 people ...

Horse carts flooded the streets, and if the horse broke its leg, it was often immediately killed on the spot. This led to further delays. Many horse owners purchased insurance policies that (for protection against fraud) provided for the slaughter of an animal by a third party. This meant that the owner had to wait for the arrival of the police, veterinarian or representative of the ASPCA (American Society Against Animal Cruelty). But even after the death of the animal congestion did not stop. “Dead horses were extremely cumbersome,” writes logistics specialist Eric Morris. “As a result, wipers often waited for the corpses to decompose, after which they could easily be cut into pieces and taken out.”
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The noise of carts and the clatter of hoofs irritated and irritated people so much that in some cities it was forbidden to ride horses ... It was extremely easy to get under a horse or a cart ... In 1900, 200 New Yorkers died, or one on 17 thousand inhabitants. In 2007, as a result of car accidents, 274 New Yorkers died (one in 30,000). This means that in 1900, a New Yorker was almost twice as likely to die from a collision with a horse than as a result of a car accident these days ...

The worst situation was with manure. The average horse produces about ten kilograms of manure per day. 200 thousand horses produce more than two thousand tons. Every day, seven days a week ... Dung overflowed city streets like snowdrifts. In the summer, the stench rose to the skies. When the rainy season came, the horse manure streams flooded the sidewalks and filled the basements of residential houses ... The excrement lying on the streets was extremely unhealthy. They represented a breeding ground for the billions of flies that spread many deadly diseases. Rats were digging in the mountains of manure in search of undigested grains of oats and the remnants of other horse feed - which, by the way, was becoming more and more expensive due to the increase in the number of horses and related demand. No one at the time was worried about global warming, but if that had happened, the horse would have become the number one enemy of society, because manure releases methane, an extremely powerful greenhouse gas.

It seemed that the world reached a state when cities could not survive with horses or without them.

And suddenly the problem disappeared. It was not related to government actions or divine intervention. Residents of cities did not organize social movements and did not promote restraint, refusing to use horsepower. The problem was solved by technological innovation ... Horses disappeared from the streets due to the appearance of an electric tram and a car. Both of these mechanisms left much less debris and worked much more efficiently. The car, cheaper to buy and easier to drive than a horse, was declared an environmental savior. Residents of cities around the world could finally breathe deeply, without pinching their noses with their fingers, and resume their journey along the road of progress.

The story, unfortunately, does not end there. The decisions that saved the world in the 20th century began to be dangerous in the next century: both cars and electric trams have their own negative external factors. Carbon monoxide emissions associated with the use of more than a billion cars and thousands of coal-fired power plants over the course of a century lead to the heating of the Earth’s atmosphere. Just as the waste products of horses at one time began to threaten civilization, now the same thing happens due to human activity.

Martin Weizman, an environmental economist at Harvard University, believes that there is a 5 percent chance that the global temperature will rise to such an extent that “the planet Earth will be destroyed in its usual form.” In some circles — for example, in the media, which often like to talk about certain apocalyptic scenarios, fatalistic sentiment goes even further.

This should not surprise us. When the solution to a problem is not right in front of our eyes, we tend to think that the problem has no solution at all. But history shows us over and over again that such assumptions are wrong.

Humanity ... has an excellent ability to find technological solutions for unsolvable at first glance problems, and, most likely, this will happen in the case of global warming. The point here is not how small or big the problem is. Human ingenuity ... always evolving. Even more encouraging news is that technological solutions often turn out to be much simpler (... cheaper) than the disaster prophets can imagine.

... Oddly enough, but the price of horse manure has increased again, and so much so that the owners of a farm in Massachusetts not so long ago appealed to the police demanding the arrest of a neighbor collecting manure on their territory. According to a neighbor, this misunderstanding was caused by the fact that the previous owner of the farm allowed him to do it. However, the new owner did not agree with this and demanded payment for the collected manure in the amount of $ 600.

Who was this neighbor - manure lover? None other than Martin Weizmann, the economist who made the frightening prediction of global warming.

“Congratulations,” one colleague wrote to Weizmann when the story hit the newspapers. “Most of the economists I know are shit exporters.” And you, apparently, are among them the only importer "

Steven D. Levitt and Steven J. Dubner "Superfriconics" (original spelling and punctuation of the translator are preserved).

Here is such a hefty pseudo-epigraph from Stephen Levitt, a super economist at the University of Chicago.



Apocalypse is canceled. However, like all other options "end of the world", starting with overpopulation and lack of food, and ending with the lack of natural resources or drinking water.

Why the religious apocalypses are canceled is clear - their dates have been appointed so many times that the next cry "wolves" few people bother. During this time, the sky has ceased to be a "firmament", and the reason for the already "big bang" has become divine. It’s ridiculous and even “a little indecent” to discuss this topic.

But popular theories about water scarcity (and “water wars”), about global warming (and “oh, horror, horror, rather, everything is in a cave”) are quite interesting to understand.

The basic error of all scientific or scientific apocalyptic predictions has one great flaw. They are reversed.

There was such a scientist (good and smart) - Thomas Malthus. On the basis of the data of LAST YEARS at his disposal, he advanced the thesis on FUTURE CENTURIES that, since the number of population increases faster than the amount of food created by a person, then ... cranks and a catastrophe. (This is, in fact, very much like a “ survivor ’s mistake ” when unknown data is ignored as non-existent.)

Even if Malthus had not done anything else in his life (and he did), then we should have been grateful to him only for this prediction error. Clever (without irony) Malthus lived at the very beginning of the industrial revolution. Even, rather, before it starts. And he could not foresee the appearance of tractors, or fertilizers, or protection from pests, or genetic methods to increase the amount of food. Prior to Malthus, for centuries and millennia, people plowed on horses and fertilized with manure.

However ... scientific progress was (and is) and the predictions of Malthus turned out to be erroneous, although their echoes are still popular with the "poorly educated part of the population." However, as the opinion that the sun revolves around the earth.

The funny thing is that all subsequent apocalyptic predictions of scientists, pseudo-scientists and ecologists make the same mistake. They do not take into account the vector of development of science and technical progress.

Blaming them for this is difficult, because it is their opinion. But it is possible to blame for the injection of hysteria, quite comparable with the religious. And hysteria scientists clearly not to face.

Why should educated people who know about the “mistake of Malthus”, who have observed the scientific and technical progress of the last hundred years, make them hysterical? What is the purpose of ecology hysteria? What is behind their predictions, except for the question of getting a budget for another tantrum or “compensation” from industry?

So. In the 20th century, mineral depletion, climate change, and water shortages were predicted. All these predictions were presented as apocalyptic.

Well ... as for the minerals, the apocalypse for which was assigned to 1970 ... the prediction has not come true. All because of the same "mistakes of the past", which was in the calculations of Malthus. New fields were discovered and developed, new mining methods were invented, and energy-saving technologies were invented. And at the moment it is obvious that the mineral reserves are more than the person needs ... because they are less and less needed. Light bulbs consume less and less electricity, homes and industries are becoming more and more energy efficient, and alternative ways of generating energy are actively developing (sun, wind, sea, etc.). Waste is sent for recycling.

Actually, this alone would be enough to cancel the climate apocalypse. But so far this has not happened. And this is despite the fact that the climate on Earth has changed many times, depending to a much greater degree on the position of the Earth relative to the Sun, solar activity, ocean currents, the movement of lithospheric plates, and volcanic activity. Human activity, compared with these forces, is simply negligible. Man, of course, affects the environment and in the last two centuries is very negative (however, many deserts in the Middle East also appeared as a result of the negative activities of ancient people). However ... this negative is associated with the source of energy, and it is now changing. And this was said above.

So what would be wiser? To spend money on tantrums of climatologists and ecologists or would it be more useful to build on this money several solar or wind power stations, to subsidize the transfer of industry and people from internal combustion engines to electric motors and electric cars? However, then the money will not get hysterics "from the environment."

Conclusion. They are not interested in climate. They are interested in financing.

Thus, for example, Ilon Mask does much more to reduce the harm to nature from human activity than all environmentalists put together and their tantrums joined to them.

The latest fashion apocalypse is water. And he will not happen either. And the reason is exactly the same. Production, becoming cleaner because it is more profitable, will pollute less water, energy will come from clean sources, treatment facilities will be modernized, water-saving technologies will be developed (because it is profitable), special machines will be installed in dry areas air, in seaside, etc. areas will be applied desalination and purification by reverse osmosis, etc ... and the apocalypse will not happen again.

Conclusion. If you don’t hysteria, but to think and solve a problem, then there will be enough energy, water, food, earth, and everything else for everyone. And it will remain. And nature will also become cleaner. In general, "everything will be fine."

Anyone who read to the end - "Thank you very much."

Illustrations: Acrolest .

PS Dear readers, I ask you to remember that “The style of controversy is more important than the subject of controversy. Objects change, and style creates civilization. ”(Grigory Pomerantz). If I have not responded to your comment, then something is wrong with the style of your controversy.

PS 2. I apologize to everyone who wrote a sensible comment, but I did not answer. If you still want to get an answer and discuss the article, you can write me a personal message. I answer them.

PS 3. I will not even comment on the argument of “singularity of examples” as speculative, because in an already large article several additional examples will not convince critics who rely on the argument of singularity, as many examples in the article did not convince. defects likes "or convince dozens of examples given in the book" Economy and human rights "(link - brief summary and an electronic version for download), but for each of those dozen are hundreds and thousands of examples cited in the book of the works of famous x economists.

PS 4. The argument of Stephen Levitt, please discuss with him personally, and not with the author of the article. Contact details are on the website of the University of Chicago. He also cites quite a few arguments in favor of his point of view in the popular science book "Super Africanomics."

Addition.
The cumulative response to some comments.
I specifically gave a very long quote about horses and cars.
The essence of this example is that the problem was resolved not as a result of state regulation and hysterics, not as a result of environmental, legislative or moral restrictions and self-restraint, but only because Benz invented a car, Fords decided to make a lot of money, but it was just easier to drive a car than a horse.
So we have an inventor (science), a “greedy egoist” (entrepreneur), “a selfish man in the street” (an ordinary resident). Everyone acted in their own interests. Selfishly. None of them thought about the “common good”, ecology, “threats”, “deterrence”, etc. “great ideas”. They were just profitable, interesting, convenient to do, buy, sell, etc. Selfishness in its purest form.
And everyone won, including ecology. And almost until the end of the 20th century, the problem disappeared.
Similar examples can be found in agriculture (the problem of not having enough food was resolved thanks to the “thirst for profit” of farmers, scientists, manufacturers of agricultural machinery) or in pharmacology (thanks to the egoism of scientists, doctors and farms, life expectancy, relatively in spite of the wars of the 20th century, doubled.)
All according to Adam Smith. According to the classics. Well, according to Ayn ​​Rand, of course.