Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
It’s morning here in Reno, and I thought I’d write a bit more about the Kaya Identity and the Beer Identity. My last post about the Kaya Identity was controversial, and I wanted to see if I could clarify my point. On the last thread, a commenter did a good job of laying out the objections to my work:
Sorry but I think you’ve all entirely misunderstood the point of the identity. The Kaya identity is a means of communicating the factors of which CO2 emissions are comprised, in order to explain the physical levers that are available if one wishes to control an economy’s CO2 emissions.
These are analogous to mathematical factors, for e.g. 6 = 3 x 2. This illustrates that 2 and 3 are factors of 6. This doesn’t prove anything mathematically – it’s just an identity. But it is informative nonetheless. It tells you that 6 can be broken down into factors of 2 and 3. In the same way, CO2 emissions can be broken down into factors of population, GDP per population, energy per population, and CO2 emissions per energy.
That is a very clear and succinct description of what the Kaya Identity is supposed to do. The only problem is … it doesn’t do that.
Let me take another shot at explaining why. To start with, the Kaya Identity states:
where “CO2 emissions” are the CO2 emissions of say a given country; “Population” is the population of that country; “GDP” is gross domestic production of the country, which is the total value of all the goods and services produced; and “Energy” is energy consumed by the country.
The Beer Identity, on the other hand, states the following:
Where all of the other variables have the same value as in the Kaya Identity, and “GBP” is gross beer production by the country.
I think that everyone would agree with those two definitions. They would also agree that both of them are clearly true.
Now, as the commenter said above, when we write
6 = 3 x 2
it tells us that six can be broken into factors of three and two. Not only that, but we can say that for example
(6 * 0.9) = 3 x (2 * 0.9)
That is to say, if we change one of the factors by e.g. multiplying it times 0.9, the total also changes by multiplying it by 0.9.
But is that true of the Beer Identity? Suppose we get more efficient at producing beer, so that it only takes 90& of the energy to make the same amount of beer. Will this decrease our CO2 production by 10%, such that
Well … no. It’s obvious that changing our beer production to make it 10% more energy-efficient will NOT reduce CO2 emissions by 10%. In other words, despite it being unquestionably true, we have no guarantee at all that such an identity actually reflects real world conditions. And the reason why it is not true is that it doesn’t include all of the factors that go into the emission of the CO2, it only includes the beer.
Now, I can hear you thinking that, well, it doesn’t work for gross beer production, but it does work for gross domestic production.
And up until yesterday, I was convinced that the Kaya Identity doesn’t work for GDP any more than it works for GBP … but I couldn’t figure out why. Then yesterday, as I was driving along the Lincoln Highway on my holiday with the gorgeous ex-fiancee, I realized the factor that is missing from the Kaya Identity is … me, driving along the Lincoln Highway on my holiday with my gorgeous ex-fiancee.
The problem is … I’m burning energy, and I’m emitting CO2, but I’m not part of the GDP. I’m not producing anything with that energy—no goods, no services, nothing. My CO2 emission is a part of the total, but it is not included in the Kaya Identity anywhere.
So in fact, the Kaya Identity does NOT tell us the “factors of which CO2 emissions are comprised, in order to explain the physical levers that are available if one wishes to control an economy’s CO2 emissions” as the commenter said.
And that to me is the problem with the Kaya Identity. It’s not that it is false. It is that it gives a false sense of security that we’ve included everything, when in fact we haven’t. And because it looks like mathematical truth, we have folks who take it as gospel, and object strongly when it is questioned or laughed at. Steven Mosher thinks I was wrong to laugh at the Kaya Identity, and I do respect his and the other opinions on the matter, his science-fu is strong … but in fact, the Kaya Identity is no more complete than the Beer Identity, which is why I laughed at it.
So that’s my objection. It’s not that the Kaya Identity is false. It can’t be, by definition its true.
It is that it gives the false impression of mathematical certitude, the impression that it represents the real world, the idea that it identifies the “factors of which CO2 emissions are comprised” … but it doesn’t. This false certainty, because people think it’s “mathematically demonstrable”, leads people to not question whether it applies to the real world.
Finally, in closing let me repeat something I said in the comments on the first thread, which likely didn’t get seen because it was somewhere down around the five hundredth comment.
l hear rumblings that people think that Anthony shouldn’t have published this piece of mine, or should disavow it in some fashion. This totally misunderstands both what Watts Up With That (WUWT) does, and Anthony’s position in the game. The strength of WUWT is not that it is always right or that it publishes only the best stuff that’s guaranteed to be valid.
The beauty and value of WUWT that it is the world’s premier location for public peer review of climate science. On a personal level, the public peer review afforded by WUWT is of immense use to me, because my work either gets falsified or not very quickly … or else, as in this case, there’s an interesting ongoing debate. For me, being shown to be wrong is more valuable than being shown to be right. If I’m right, well, I thought so to begin with or I wouldn’t have published it, and it doesn’t change my direction.
But if someone can point out my mistakes, it saves me endless time following blind alleys and wrong paths. And my opinions on the Kaya Identity may indeed be wrong.
There is much value in this public defenestration of some hapless piece of bad science, whether it is mine or someone else’s. It is important to know not only which ideas are wrong, but exactly why they are wrong. When Anthony publishes scientific claims from the edges of the field, generally they are quickly either confirmed or falsified. This is hugely educational for scientists of all kinds, to know how to counter some of the incorrect arguments, as well as giving room for those unusual ideas which tomorrow may be mainstream ideas.
So it is not Anthony’s job to determine whether or not the work of the guest authors will stand the harsh light of public exposure. That’s the job of the peer reviewers, who are you and I and everyone making defensible supported scientific comments. Even if Anthony had a year to analyze and dissect each piece, he couldn’t do that job. There’s no way that one man’s wisdom can substitute for that of the crowd in the free marketplace of scientific ideas. Bear in mind that even with peer review, something like two-thirds of peer-reviewed science is falsified within a year, and Anthony is making judgements, publish or don’t publish, on dozens of papers every week.
So please, dear friends, cut Anthony some slack. He’s just providing the arena wherein in 2014 we practice the blood sport of science, the same sport we’ve had for a few hundred years now, ripping the other guys ideas to bits, also known as trying to scientifically falsify another person’s claims that you think don’t hold water. It is where we can get a good reading on whether the ideas will stand up to detailed hostile examination.
It is not Anthony’s job to decide if mine or any other ideas and expositions and claims will withstand that test of time … and indeed, it is often of value for him to publish things that will not stand the test of time, so that we can understand exactly where they are lacking.
So please don’t fill up the poor man’s email box with outrage simply because you think a post is not scientifically valid enough to be published. Send your emails to the guest author instead, or simply post your objections in a comment on the thread. Anthony is just providing the boxing ring. It is not his job to predict in advance who is going to win the fight. His job is to fill the fight cards with interesting bouts … and given the number of comments on my previous post about the Beer Identity, and the huge popularity of his website, he is doing it very well.
Regards to each and all of you, my best to Mosher and all the folks who have commented, and my great thanks to Anthony for the huge amount of work he does behind the scenes to keep this all going. I’m on the road again, and my highway CO2 emissions are still not included in the Kaya Identity …
w.
As Always: If you disagree with something that someone has said, please have the courtesy to quote their exact words. It avoids much confusion and misunderstanding.
That’s one remarkable advance in brewing technology you’re proposing – especially if making beer consumed less than 10% of the country’s energy in the first place. Not one an advance in brewing that reduces the energy used to make beer by 10%, but an advance in brewing that reduces the whole country’s consumption by 10%.
It seems that you are being deliberately obtuse.
What happens if we divide both sides with CO2?
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 12, 2014 at 10:57 am
I’m buying fuel inter alia from Saudi Arabia, where it is counted correctly as part of their GDP, and thus it can’t be part of ours.
=======
Well, no, not really. GDP is economic value added during a period. The distributor of the gasoline added value (i.e. made money) by making the gasoline available to you where you needed it (unless you sucked it out of the ground in Saudi Arabia, and refined it yourself, which I don’t think you did).
Also, Caveman, since you asked for a better example, consider things like the flaring of gas from oil wells, or the CO2 coming from underground coal fires in Pennsylvania, India, and China. None of them are in the Kaya identity, but all of them emit copious quantities of CO2.
w.
I think the Kaya Identity is meaningful.
It’s the recipe for Soylent Green.
I don’t know anything about Kaya’s Identity but shouldn’t it be:
CO2 emissions = Population * GDP * Energy use
_______________________
Energy efficiency
Where efficiency is based on CO2 generated per unit of energy?
cn
Willis sez: “I’m buying fuel inter alia from Saudi Arabia, where it is counted correctly as part of their GDP,”
Consider the concept of “value added” (which in some nations is taxed via the appropriately named “Value Added Tax”. Buy raw ore, crude oil, fresh hides, etc. GDP goes up. Smelt, refine, tan, etc, GDP goes up. Pour ingots, distill gas, cut the leathers… ship a barge load, truck out fuel to the gas station, and sew up a vest. At each stage the value goes up.
In VAT calculating nations the tax is deferred until the ultimate consumer buys the finished goods, at which point all accumulated values are realized for the goal of extracting the taxable value.
If Willis buys gas in California, Saudia Arabian sheiks, Liberian oil tanker operators, US coastal refiners, chain gas station retailer management, and the local Exxon (or whatever) franchisees have all contributed to “value added”, getting the product to market. EVERYBODY along the way, Saudi to the local station, has contributed to GDP. (and may be said to be paying taxes on the profits or income of such, even though the US does not have a VAT)
But not Willis. He bought the gas and produces nothing measured in the GDP. No value is added in moving the consumer from here to there and back.
The trip may be the most valuable precious memory the pair of them will ever make. But it’s not measured in the GDP.
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/RFK-Speeches/Remarks-of-Robert-F-Kennedy-at-the-University-of-Kansas-March-18-1968.aspx
” Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”
Kennedy was, as far as I can tell, incorrect on the specifics but correct in the general trend. The GNP (now GDP) is a flawed measure. Willis is incorrect as well about where and which nation his purchase is credited, but I think he is correct, like Kennedy, in his general point.
Willis is basically correct. THE major problem is that GDP is a very wobbly concept. The secondary problem is that those number don’t exit globally, only locally. GDP is DOMESTIC product of a country. Every country is different.
So take, for example, an organic farmer in a 3rd world country. Their energy input is very low. Yet they produce. Compare with USA farming by agribusiness, huge fossil fuel inputs. Next take a look at my garden in the back yard. I often have decent “produce” from my garden, but it is not part of “GDP”. All three of us can grow corn, but with drastic variation in energy / corn. My product is not part of the “money” economy and uncounted. The farmer in 3rd Land may be bartering, or in a cash and not counted market. (For example, what is the contribution of Mexican M.J. to GDP?…) So which of this is in GDP? What energy intensity ought to be used?
Similar issues exist for doing dishes, working on your car, doing your own home repairs, etc. etc.
So Willis, driving down the road, is “manufacturing a good or service”. An enjoyable day out. He can make that same “day out” of joy with one gallon, or ten gallons, depending on when and where he goes. That “production” is not captured in GDP. The quantity of fuel used is highly variable per unit of GPP (Gross Personal Product 😉 made). The SALE of the gasoline shows up in GDP, but what if it sits in a can in the garage as part of earthquake / generator prep? Does it enter GDP a second time if used to run the lawn mower? (It does if the lawn mower user is billing you… but not if you do your own mowing…)
That’s the problem with GDP that Willis is pointing out. Dumping the gas on a bonfire is great fun, and makes little product past the entertainment (that isn’t part of GDP), while that same gas in a Taxi is counted as part of GDP again when the taxi reports the transaction.
A similar problem is the Broken Window Fallacy. If Willis spends his day breaking windows, then fixing them, that shows up in GDP as an increase, yet no net increase in real net wealth or utility happened. So it works both ways. Some things are GDP but net negative “production”. Others are net positives but not in GDP. It is basically wrong to use GDP in the way used in the formula, and certainly wrong to use it as a global term.
Basically, I can make lots of nonsense equations that are clearly a valid math identity. Doesn’t give them any meaning our utility.
Per the question of folks using for shown correct results: Well, it IS the case that CO2=CO2, so I’d expect the results to be right… Calculate something based on CO2 with that equation, it darned well better get the CO2 number right…
progressive grantees who wish to manipulate all activities based on a scary looking scientific mathematical ‘model’. It does not say much about poor Central Americans countries who have low GDPs but use slash and burn agriculture every dry season.
Nor does it say much about the American economy of which the GDP is mostly printed dollars propping up 5 sacred banks and a balloon stock market.
You are correct in addressing and calling this out NOW..before the Krugman Progressives weigh out our grocery sacks and tax us accordingly… so they can line the pockets of Central American Despots and buy beach houses next to Charlie Rengels’ place.
You can rearrange the equation in a multitude of ways, since terms cancel out. One way would be to say, ultimately, that co2 emissions = GDP * (dollar-of-GDP-specific co2 emissions).
Of course, the problem is that the last term, the dollar-of-GDP-specific co2 emissions*, can only be calculated by dividing the total amount of co2 emissions by the GDP. Consequently the rewritten identity predicts nothing.
The value of an “identity”, at least in accounting, is that you can have a basis to reconcile independently-determined terms in the identity. When you can’t get terms in the identity other than by “begging the question” (i.e. only as a function of other terms in the identity), then the identity is as useful as any other tautology.
*Why call them “carbon” emissions, when the molecule is represented as CO2, with twice as many oxygen atoms as carbon? Logically, we should call them “oxygen” emissions, in preference to “carbon” emissions, if we want not to call them carbon-dioxide emissions.
Willis writes:
‘I’m buying fuel inter alia from Saudi Arabia, where it is counted correctly as part of their GDP, and thus it can’t be part of ours.’
Although I don’t think your specific point about fuel from Saudi Arabia is all that strong when argued through to the end, this general line of thinking is far more productive.
As I said on the last thread, I think the Kaya identity (like the beer identity) is true as a matter of arithmetic, but the real question is whether it is useful.
The Kaya identity will be useful in so far as GDP is a useful measure of economic activity. Of course GDP has all sorts of limitations. As someone said above, it doesn’t capture your enjoyment from driving, and might go up as a result of repairing damage from a riot.
These criticisms of GDP have been extensively developed – mostly by greens and lefties as it happens, although also by Austrian economists and others.
But it would be a useful starting point to recognise that GDP does have at least some use as an indicator of overall economic progress – more than GBP, anyway. Many economists in the private sector as well as academics have been working for decades on trying to develop meaningful, reliable figures.
Notably, the concept of GDP has been developed decades before the climate debate took off.
It turns out that some thought has gone in to the problem of cross border trade (such as with Saudi Arabia), problems such as the fact that currencies change value (as was raised in the last thread) and adding up GDP of different countries (as raised by E. M. Smith above).
If you want to try developing a measure of economic progress that is better than GDP, then go ahead, I would be eager to see the results. (Although I would recommend you glance back first and see how economists have thought about concepts such as value added.)
But if we have an improved economic measure (IEM) we could still get a new identity, just as true as the Kaya or beer idendity:
CO2 emissions = population * (IEM / population) * (Energy / IEM) * (CO2 / Energy)
and I would argue that this would be more useful to the extent that IEM was better than GDP.
Steven Mosher says:
“If no one bought gas what would happen to gdp”
I do believe it would go down and the equation in question would suggest CO2 emissions would also go down. How about that, an equation that reduces to X=X revealing useful information.
Kinda like:
Seconds = Seconds
Seconds = Minutes X Seconds/Minute
Seconds = Hours X Minutes/Hour X Seconds/Minute
Seconds = Days X Hours/Day X Minutes/Hour X Seconds/Minute
Seconds = Years x Days/Year X Hours/Day X Minutes/Hour X Seconds/Minute
etc. etc.
So how many seconds in 3 years? Use the equation above that reduces to X=X without even knowing the answer to begin with but knowing how many seconds are in a minute, minutes in an hour, hours in a day, and days in a year you can calculate it. Amazing!
BUT: How many hours are in a day? 24 you say? Well, is that exactly 24? What difference does it make? For 3 years not much, but what if you were calculating for a few hundred million years? Hmmm. The accuracy of my equation is dependant upon the accuracy of the factors within it. Surprise surprise.
I didn’t see it at first, but I see now how the Kaya Identity can be useful in showing the relationships of factors that go into the output of human produced CO2 and in estimating how changing one factor can affect that output. I’m not sure how good such estimates are in the real world, but it does seem to give you a rough idea of what goes into raising or lowering human-caused CO2. If you change the CO2 emissions per energy used, for example, by switching from coal to natural gas, it gives you an estimate on how much that change will reduce CO2. That can be useful to those who care about human produced CO2 emissions. Those who don’t care will not find it useful. (It doesn’t tell you about natural CO2 emissions, such as that from the oceans, volcanoes, wild fires, changes in plant growth, insects, or bacteria. But those are pretty much outside our control anyway.)
As for all identities being “useless”, as many commenters seem to think, that is not the case. For example, consider the problem of determining the number of truck trailers needed to haul a given amount of goods. To keep it simple, let’s say the goods are already boxed and on pallets. You need to ship 96 pallets across country. If the pallets and trailers are all standard size, you can use the following formula to calculate the number of truck trailers you need: t = p/(p/t). You know that you can fit 24 pallets on a trailer, so the pallets per trailer (p/t) = 24. Now we can solve for t by plugging in what we know: t = 96/24 or t = 4. So you need 4 truck trailers to haul 96 pallets. As you can see, the formula is useful even though it can be reduced to an identity of t=t.
The real world doesn’t come in standard sizes like trailers and pallets, but rough estimates can still be useful.
What about the methane from drinking beer and sending the used grains to the feedlots?
Following Matthew R Marler at 10:02 am …
Let “instantaneous acceleration of an interplanetary probe” = A
We can now say: A = Pop * GDP/Pop * Energy/GDP * A/Energy
Clearly, we can increase the instantaneous acceleration of an interplanetary probe by increasing our standard of living! It will also increase if the population goes up.
Why is the Kaya Identity any more meaningful than this?
Willis,
Thankfully, you have dropped the mathematically ignorant look ma, everything cancels so it must be wrong and I must laugh assertions. It would have been manly of you to have acknowledged the error instead of simply walking away from it, but at least you did walk away from it.
Unfortunately, that means that you’re doubling down on the remainder of your argument. That has two main components. The first is your “Beer Identity”. The second is used to enable the first, and is your use of equivocation, playing on the ambiguity of the vernacular descriptions of the KI terms. Both are fallacious.
Addressing the second first, we have this assertion from you:
That is not exactly correct. It is certainly good enough for people who read the whole paper and understand the KI and who are using it and discussing it in good faith. Unfortunately, that doesn’t describe how you are approaching it.
In the KI, “CO2 emissions” are not “the CO2 emissions of say a given country”. They are more specifically the energy-related CO2 emissions of a given country’s economic production.
Similarly, in the KI “Energy” is not “energy consumed by the country”. It is more specifically the energy consumed by the country for economic production.
You equivocate on these terms, switching back and forth between specifics of your choosing. You then think you have proved something when you point out the bust that you have fabricated by playing with the definition of terms. This is how you hide the fact that your “Beer Identity” is mal formed, when the KI is not. Uncovering your ruse is as simple as putting descriptive subscripts on the terms. The KI thus becomes:
And your “Beer Identity” kludged from the KI becomes:
With the equivocation removed, the reader now easily sees that some things in your “Beer Identity” look a little odd. A couple of your terms express a ratio of one item defined relative to GBP vs another item defined relative to GDP. Those terms don’t seem particularly useful, as (unlike all of the terms in the Kaya Identity) they don’t have any meaning WRT things we commonly talk about in the real world.
More importantly, the reader now easily sees that there are some things in your “Beer Identity” that are very different than you describe them. This is shown in you supposition:
And in your subsequent restatement of the “Beer Identity” with the figure 0.9 thrown in, which allegedly represents an increase in the energy efficiency of beer production.
The problem is, there is no term for the efficiency of producing beer in your “Beer Identity”. That term would look like this:
And that term is not to be found anywhere in your “Beer Identity”. So, your claim that your application of the 0.9 factor to your “Beer Identity” represents a 10% increase in beer production energy efficiency is simply false. You did not do the math correctly.
I trust that the website owner will now add to this post the entirely accurate sub heading:
“Willis Eschenbach’s “Beer Identity” carbon equation and criticism of the “Kaya Identity” has been falsified – due to a stupid maths error“.
Willis writes:
‘consider things like the flaring of gas from oil wells … None of them are in the Kaya identity, but all of them emit copious quantities of CO2.’
Why could they not be included?
Take the example of flaring from oil and gas production. The WG III IPCC report chapter 7 writes:
‘Overall, fossil fuel extraction and distribution are currently estimated to contribute 5%–10% of total fossil‐fuel related GHG emissions (Alsalam and Ragnauth, 2011; IEA, 2011a; Burnham et al., 2012). Emissions associated with fuel production and transmission can be reduced through higher energy efficiency and the use of lower carbon energy sources in mines, fields, and transportation networks (IPIECA and API, 2007; Hasan et al., 2011), the capture and utilization (UNECE, 2010b), or treatment (US EPA, 2006; IEA, 2009a; Karacan et al., 2011; Karakurt et al., 2011; Su et al., 2011) of methane from coal mining, the reduction of venting and flaring from oil and gas production (IPIECA and API, 2009; Johnson and Coderre, 2011), and leak detection and repair for natural gas systems (Goedbloed, 2011; Wilwerding, 2011).’
and later
‘Whilst growth in GHG emissions is expected as countries build their industrial
base and consumption moves beyond meeting basic needs, minimizing this trend will involve
exploring new opportunities for scaling up modern energy access where possible by embracing
cleaner and more efficient energy options that are consistent with regional and global sustainability
goals. One such opportunity is the avoidance of associated natural gas flaring in oil‐ and gas‐
producing developing countries where venting and flaring amounts to 69% of world total of
150 billion cubic metres–representing 1.2% of global CO2 emissions (Farina, 2011; GGFR and World
Bank, 2011). For a country such as Nigeria, which flares about 15 billion m3
of gas–sufficient to meet its energy needs along with the current needs of many neighbouring countries (Dung et al., 2008, this represents an opportunity towards a low‐carbon pathway (Hassan and Kouhy, 2013).’
http://report.mitigation2014.org/drafts/final-draft-postplenary/ipcc_wg3_ar5_final-draft_postplenary_chapter7.pdf
I’m not interested in taking the IPCC’s policy advice – that’s NOT why I quoted the lines here. I’m not saying reducing these emissions is necessarily the way to go (although in some cases it may be a good idea regardless of CO2).
I also have not read their discussions on flaring in any depth – I’m sure I’ve missed other places where they discuss it.
I’m quoting the lines only to show that there doesn’t seem to be a technical problem in counting up emissions from flaring as part of emissions from energy production.
Willis was claiming that they are not (or cannot?) be counted. This looks to me like evidence that they can be (and are?) counted.
Chief, such a great post we will add it to the GDP, just this once. lol
However, remember this formula: organic=weeding by hand. Please reconsider this statement:
“So take, for example, an organic farmer in a 3rd world country. Their energy input is very low. Yet they produce.”
Since the weeds must be controlled by hand, then you cannot say that their energy input is very low, because it will require hundreds of hours to weed that same hectare by hand. These hours of labor and the lesser yield produced cannot be dismissed as “energy input which is very low in organic farming” except by sleight of hand. And perhaps this is a problem with the whole Kaya Identity: by forcing a hand labor economy, with hundreds of hours required to get the same yield in agriculture, the energy appears to be reduced but has been greatly increased.
*********
Additional information from pesticideguy:
There are an avg of 300,ooo weed seeds in every acre of land.
These weed seeds can remain dormant easily up to 70 years.
Organic = human drudgery of bending over weeding, usually by women and children.
This also causes cultivated fields to be left and new fields to be cleared because the weeds get to numerous to be dealt with by hand in C and S American farms, for example. So the energy input is out of this world for organic farmers because you must consider how the weeds were controlled, and that is through hand weeding within the rows, even if a tractor is used between rows. Controlling weeds by hand also permanently limits any farmer in Africa or S America to about one hectare, because hand weeding any more land than that is impossible.
Someone has doubtless pointed this out already, but fuel consumption is part of personal consumption expenditures which is the largest component of GDP=PCE+I+G+E (see basic economics texts). This is actually the way US GDP is calculated. It’s not so obvious when GDP is calculated in terms of production.
This is not to say that GDP necessarily accounts for all CO2 emissions (as in ‘externalities’).
Correction
Additional information from pesticideguy:
There are an avg of 300,ooo weed seeds in every acre of land.
It should say that there are an avg of 300 million to a billion weed seeds in every acre of land. Ty.
For anyone not following what this Kaya formula actually does, put numbers in for Energy, Population, GDP and CO2. Any numbers will work, 10, 24, 36, 40 – whatever. See what happens. The end result will always be CO2 = CO2. Then explain how this is useful – in any real world situation.
If you missed the point, no matter what values you put for Energy, Population, GDP and CO2, the answer will always be the value of CO2.
Arthur says:
July 12, 2014 at 12:03 pm
=================
As I mentioned above, it is useful if you have determined the quantities that you plug into the identity independently of each other, otherwise it is not.
Consider the identity:
Balance in my bank account = (statement balance) + (deposits made since statement) – (withdrawals made since statement).
Ultimately, this says “balance in my bank account = balance in my bank account”.
However, since you can determine each quantity independent of the others, when you go through the motions and find out that it does NOT balance, you look for an error.
Millions of accountants do this every day, and have done so for a good number of years. They don’t seek to derive new insight from the identity itself, they use the identity as a way of validating independent observations of the factors in the identity.
Both the Kaya Identity and the Beer Identity are tautologies. There is no useful information in either. Put in CO2 in the right side of the equation. Multiply and divide CO2 by numbers evaluating to one. Voila, you get CO2 on the left. Multiplying and dividing CO2 by *any* set of numbers evaluating to one, and you will get CO2 on the left.
Willis is completely missing the point of this identity. The Kaya Identity has 4 terms and shows that an UP or DOWN change in any of those 4 terms will result in a corresponding change, in the same direction, in the CO2 output. It doesn’t include coefficients or non-linearities. It doesn’t communicate the _magnitude_ of change, only its _direction_.
Willis says:
“Well … no. It’s obvious that changing our beer production to make it 10% more energy-efficient will NOT reduce CO2 emissions by 10%.”
You are correct, Willis, It will not reduce CO2 emissions by exactly 10%. But that’s where you are getting lost, You are looking for this identity to predict precisely how large the change will be and it simply doesn’t attempt to do that. The identity only shows you the _direction_ off the affect, not its magnitude.
Willis stated:
“but in fact, the Kaya Identity is no more complete than the Beer Identity, which is why I laughed at it.”
——————-
I was thinking the Beer Identity looked incomplete, …. cause it appears to me the equation is missing an important factor, ….. which is, …… *(GBP)(BECO2)
Wherein GBP is the gross beer production ….. and BECO2 is the …… beer emitted CO2.
But then all I know for sure is the “beer drinking” part of the equation.