8 ms·

> This is due to the rapidly accelerating energy transition.. Err, just NO. This is largely due to global trade being flat for the past 10 years [1], this is a

> This is due to the rapidly accelerating energy transition.. Err, just NO. This is largely due to global trade being flat for the past 10 years [1], this is a good proxy to measure real economic growth. Don't believe GDP as an indicator of real growth, they keep on adding fictitious sources to these numbers. Did you know that rent is part of GDP? And even rent that homeowners would have paid to a landlord had they owned their home? [2] So basically this is just about the world becoming poorer since the 2008 financial crisis (and covid of course). Also, "not following the worst case scenario" is not really a reason to rejoice, 4.5 degrees is still absolutely terrible. Also, funny enough the page they link to as a source for "Global CO2 emissions (both fossil and land use) have been relatively flat" has for title "Analysis: Global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels hit record high in 2022" [3]. So, lols. I could also add that less emissions growth doesn't mean less carbon accumulates in the atmosphere [4] [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/merchandise-exports-gdp-cepii?time=1980..latest&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/merchandise-exports-gdp-c... [2] https://unherd.com/2018/11/truth-gdp-figures/ https://unherd.com/2018/11/truth-gdp-figures/ [3] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-global-co2-emissions-from-fossil-fuels-hit-record-high-in-2022/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-global-co2-emissions-fr... [4] https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/ https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/

epups 3y ago
> Don't believe GDP as an indicator of real growth, they keep on adding fictitious sources to these numbers. Did you know that rent is part of GDP? And even rent that homeowners would have paid to a landlord had they owned their home? Of course renting is an economic activity that should be reflected in the GDP, and it is as "real" as anything else. To focus solely on international trade feels shortsighted as well. When a doctor sees you and charges you $200, that's going into the GDP but not into any trade balance. The world is richer since 2008 by almost any metric you can think of, including inflation-adjusted per capita income which is independent of GDP.
- tuatoru 3y ago
  So the country is better off if prices of non-tradable services are increased by their suppliers? That sounds like the broken window fallacy.
  - iso1631 3y ago
    If I own a house (outright) and live in it, I pay nothing, and no impact on GDP If my neighbour owns a house (outright) and lives in it, I pay nothing, and no impact on GDP If I rent from my neighbour for $10k a year, and he rents from me for $10k a year, GDP increases by $20k a year, but nothing has really changed, expect the amount of money paid in taxes. So that's why you have imputed rent as part of GDP. Fine, I get that. How about this scenario I have a kid and look after it, I pay nothing, and no impact on GDP My neighbour has a kid and looks after it, he pays nothing, and no impact on GDP I look after my neighbours kid 3 days a week and he looks after mine, in an exchange, no impact on GDP I look after my neighbours kid 3 days a week and he pays me $300, and he looks after mine 3 days a week and I pay him $300. GDP increases $600 a week, and more money is taken in taxes. Do we include all unpaid work? If I (a painter) pay my neighbor (a gardener) to garden my front yard and he pays me to paint his garage, then GDP increases. If I do the gardening myself, and he does the painting himself, GDP doesn't increase. How about me looking after my old parent vs me working overtime and paying a care home to do it?
    - epups 3y ago
      The GDP is a measure of economic activity, meaning the exchange of money for products or services. Of course there are activities, such as the ones you describe, that will not be accounted because they are done for free or in exchange for something else. > How about me looking after my old parent vs me working overtime and paying a care home to do it? Yes of course the latter will have an impact on the GDP, and the former not. You are producing more work for money and you are buying more work for money.
      - brvsft 3y ago
        The point is that the country is no wealthier in either scenario, yet people use GDP as a proxy for the productive output and wealth of a country.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- laratied 3y ago
  So often I read so many utterly ridiculous economic opinions expressed here by people who should know better and be better educated. How can a smart, presumably educated person not know that rent counts as economic activity? To say the world is poorer than in 2008 is just utterly preposterous. Per capita GPD in China went from 3500 to 12500. India 1000 to 2200. There is half the world. US, Canada and Europe is only 15% of the population but I don't know how the case can be made we are poorer than in 2008 either.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - empyrrhicist 3y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
    - antisthenes 3y ago
      For the 1000th time, regular rent (e.g. you pay $1000/mo for an apartment) is not the same as rent-seeking.
      - empyrrhicist 3y ago
        It's just correlated with ALL sorts of rent seeking: https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-r...
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    > How can a smart, presumably educated person not know that rent counts as economic activity? Of course it's "economic activity". But if I sublet to someone that sublets to someone that sublets to someone that lives in an apartment, that's a 4x increase in money flow but there's no production of goods or services at all. It makes sense to have the cost of building and maintaining homes represented somewhere, but rent is a poor proxy for that.
- mordae 3y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XndsyYUjMv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XndsyYUjMv8 Watch this. Counting rent is about as sensible as counting financial services.
  - epups 3y ago
    No thanks - if you are interested in an argument, please present yours in written format.
iso1631 3y ago
Your link says that in 2005 international trade as a percent of GDP was 23% and in 2014 it's 24%, so about the same. Gross World Product was about $43t in 2005 and $78t in 2014, so that would suggest international trade has increased from $10t to $18t in 10 years, nearly doubling, inflation adjusted. You can say that the non-international part of GDP is overestimated, lets say by 40% more in 2014 than in 2005. That would mean that real GWP in 2014 was just 56t, and therefore the 18t international trade would actually be 32% -- a 33% increase in 10 years.
tuatoru 3y ago
Looks right. The trend break in the OP's chart of emissions happens around 2009, right when the GFC started to have major effects.
foobar36079311 3y ago
Another fun effect of less overall emissions growth from burning fossil fuel, whether due to decline in global economic activity or emissions target regulations, is a specific reduction in sulfur dioxide emissions. (Atmospheric SO2 has a cooling effect and, sort of, mitigates CO2 driven warming. One terraforming idea is to just increase atmospheric SO2, which obviously has problems of its own; see Venus...)
- Aerbil313 3y ago
  Yeah, see aerosol cooling effect.
Guthur 3y ago
Really, ok what is the good part of plus 4.5 degrees? Is it all bad or has no one actually considered both sides.
- empyrrhicist 3y ago
  Looking for good parts of 4.5 degrees of warming is like looking for a bright side in a horrible apartment fire. Sure, it might open up some more green space for a future park, but given all the terrible death and suffering that kind of misses the point.
  - Guthur 3y ago
    Would it open a north sea passage, would it make most of Russia inhabitable...
    - empyrrhicist 3y ago
      I feel like that exactly matches the comparison I was making.
- Sakos 3y ago
  I fail to see any upside that would justify the displacement and suffering of hundreds of millions of people across the planet. Are you serious?
  - Guthur 3y ago
    Still not telling the good side then? We're talking global control here so displacement is not that far fetched.
    - Sakos 3y ago
      Still not caring about the suffering of millions? Okay, I'm done here.
tomcar288 3y ago
Also, GDP is inaccurate because the CPI is innacurate. compare the CPI with any realistic way of measuring inflation such as case shiller, the big mac index or the price of oil in barrels and you'll quickly see that the CPI is undercounting by a several percentage points per year. she shadowstat: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts Also, related, check out Nate Hagens work on the Great simplification (he's got a podcast and on youtube). I won't spoil it here but he and his team of scientists have made some very interesting discoveries on future GDP growth.
Aunche 3y ago
> This is largely due to global trade being flat for the past 10 years People are consuming more international goods and more domestic goods, so trade as a percentage of trade relative to GDP has stagnated, but not volume of trade. Since 2008, maritime trade has increased by 3 billion tons or 37% [1]. > Did you know that rent is part of GDP? It's also a component of the inflation, so it cancels out. Housing is getting more expensive, but part of it is that we are consuming more of it than we used to. Home sizes have been growing, but household sizes have been falling [2]. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/264117/tonnage-of-worldwide-maritime-trade-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/264117/tonnage-of-worldw... [2] https://www.thezebra.com/resources/home/median-home-size-in-us/ https://www.thezebra.com/resources/home/median-home-size-in-...
- emilyst 3y ago
  The first source isn't really accessible unless you have an account. Total exports in terms of adjusted cost _has_ stagnated: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-trade-exports-constant-prices?time=1992..latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-trade-exports-const.... I suspect sheer maritime freight tonnage may be a less reliable proxy due to factors like cost of shipping changes, role of air freight, tariff changes, etc. Maybe share all the trade and globalization graphs instead? https://ourworldindata.org/trade-and-globalization https://ourworldindata.org/trade-and-globalization Your second source, hilariously, predates the entire pandemic (which is when home prices really took off). It also says very little to support your point that we're "consuming more" housing because home sizes are growing. The Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index seems to suggest that home prices were rising only modestly until the pandemic. https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/indices/indicators/sp-corelogic-case-shiller-us-national-home-price-nsa-index/#overview https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/indices/indicators/sp-core...
  - Aunche 3y ago
    > Total exports in terms of adjusted cost _has_ stagnated This doesn't seem to match what you'd get by multiplying their figures of inflation-adjusted GDP [1] with their figures of exports as a percentage of GDP [2]. > Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Home prices aren't factored into in either GDP or inflation because they're considered an asset. You're right that the economy has stagnated since the pandemic, especially in America. My point is that it's absurd to suggest that the global economy hasn't grown in the past decade. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-gdp-over-the-last-two-millennia?time=1900..2015 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-gdp-over-the-last-t... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/merchandise-exports-gdp-cepii?time=1981..latest&facet=none&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/merchandise-exports-gdp-c...
vpribish 3y ago
your global trade link stops in 2014, but the world bank shows the trade decline trend continuing to the present [1] you raise concerns about the interpretation of GDP and use trade as a more believable replacement - but how about using manufacturing as a more direct replacement? it seems to have continued it's rising trend through the present. [2] rising by 50% in the last 10 years. this seems to show that growth has not been flat, but has been rising in line with long-term trends. [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/manufacturing-output https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/manufacturin...
kieranmaine 3y ago
The data on the global Electricity Mix provides evidence there is an energy transition - https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix
- lolc 3y ago
  Expanding the view to the whole energy mix, the evidence is minuscule: https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix

epups 3y ago

> Don't believe GDP as an indicator of real growth, they keep on adding fictitious sources to these numbers. Did you know that rent is part of GDP? And even rent that homeowners would have paid to a landlord had they owned their home? Of course renting is an economic activity that should be reflected in the GDP, and it is as "real" as anything else. To focus solely on international trade feels shortsighted as well. When a doctor sees you and charges you $200, that's going into the GDP but not into any trade balance. The world is richer since 2008 by almost any metric you can think of, including inflation-adjusted per capita income which is independent of GDP.

tuatoru 3y ago
So the country is better off if prices of non-tradable services are increased by their suppliers? That sounds like the broken window fallacy.
- iso1631 3y ago
  If I own a house (outright) and live in it, I pay nothing, and no impact on GDP If my neighbour owns a house (outright) and lives in it, I pay nothing, and no impact on GDP If I rent from my neighbour for $10k a year, and he rents from me for $10k a year, GDP increases by $20k a year, but nothing has really changed, expect the amount of money paid in taxes. So that's why you have imputed rent as part of GDP. Fine, I get that. How about this scenario I have a kid and look after it, I pay nothing, and no impact on GDP My neighbour has a kid and looks after it, he pays nothing, and no impact on GDP I look after my neighbours kid 3 days a week and he looks after mine, in an exchange, no impact on GDP I look after my neighbours kid 3 days a week and he pays me $300, and he looks after mine 3 days a week and I pay him $300. GDP increases $600 a week, and more money is taken in taxes. Do we include all unpaid work? If I (a painter) pay my neighbor (a gardener) to garden my front yard and he pays me to paint his garage, then GDP increases. If I do the gardening myself, and he does the painting himself, GDP doesn't increase. How about me looking after my old parent vs me working overtime and paying a care home to do it?
  - epups 3y ago
    The GDP is a measure of economic activity, meaning the exchange of money for products or services. Of course there are activities, such as the ones you describe, that will not be accounted because they are done for free or in exchange for something else. > How about me looking after my old parent vs me working overtime and paying a care home to do it? Yes of course the latter will have an impact on the GDP, and the former not. You are producing more work for money and you are buying more work for money.
    - brvsft 3y ago
      The point is that the country is no wealthier in either scenario, yet people use GDP as a proxy for the productive output and wealth of a country.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
laratied 3y ago
So often I read so many utterly ridiculous economic opinions expressed here by people who should know better and be better educated. How can a smart, presumably educated person not know that rent counts as economic activity? To say the world is poorer than in 2008 is just utterly preposterous. Per capita GPD in China went from 3500 to 12500. India 1000 to 2200. There is half the world. US, Canada and Europe is only 15% of the population but I don't know how the case can be made we are poorer than in 2008 either.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- empyrrhicist 3y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
  - antisthenes 3y ago
    For the 1000th time, regular rent (e.g. you pay $1000/mo for an apartment) is not the same as rent-seeking.
    - empyrrhicist 3y ago
      It's just correlated with ALL sorts of rent seeking: https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-r...
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  > How can a smart, presumably educated person not know that rent counts as economic activity? Of course it's "economic activity". But if I sublet to someone that sublets to someone that sublets to someone that lives in an apartment, that's a 4x increase in money flow but there's no production of goods or services at all. It makes sense to have the cost of building and maintaining homes represented somewhere, but rent is a poor proxy for that.
mordae 3y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XndsyYUjMv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XndsyYUjMv8 Watch this. Counting rent is about as sensible as counting financial services.
- epups 3y ago
  No thanks - if you are interested in an argument, please present yours in written format.

iso1631 3y ago

Your link says that in 2005 international trade as a percent of GDP was 23% and in 2014 it's 24%, so about the same. Gross World Product was about $43t in 2005 and $78t in 2014, so that would suggest international trade has increased from $10t to $18t in 10 years, nearly doubling, inflation adjusted. You can say that the non-international part of GDP is overestimated, lets say by 40% more in 2014 than in 2005. That would mean that real GWP in 2014 was just 56t, and therefore the 18t international trade would actually be 32% -- a 33% increase in 10 years.

tuatoru 3y ago

Looks right. The trend break in the OP's chart of emissions happens around 2009, right when the GFC started to have major effects.

foobar36079311 3y ago

Another fun effect of less overall emissions growth from burning fossil fuel, whether due to decline in global economic activity or emissions target regulations, is a specific reduction in sulfur dioxide emissions. (Atmospheric SO2 has a cooling effect and, sort of, mitigates CO2 driven warming. One terraforming idea is to just increase atmospheric SO2, which obviously has problems of its own; see Venus...)

Aerbil313 3y ago
Yeah, see aerosol cooling effect.

Guthur 3y ago

Really, ok what is the good part of plus 4.5 degrees? Is it all bad or has no one actually considered both sides.

empyrrhicist 3y ago
Looking for good parts of 4.5 degrees of warming is like looking for a bright side in a horrible apartment fire. Sure, it might open up some more green space for a future park, but given all the terrible death and suffering that kind of misses the point.
- Guthur 3y ago
  Would it open a north sea passage, would it make most of Russia inhabitable...
  - empyrrhicist 3y ago
    I feel like that exactly matches the comparison I was making.
Sakos 3y ago
I fail to see any upside that would justify the displacement and suffering of hundreds of millions of people across the planet. Are you serious?
- Guthur 3y ago
  Still not telling the good side then? We're talking global control here so displacement is not that far fetched.
  - Sakos 3y ago
    Still not caring about the suffering of millions? Okay, I'm done here.

tomcar288 3y ago

Also, GDP is inaccurate because the CPI is innacurate. compare the CPI with any realistic way of measuring inflation such as case shiller, the big mac index or the price of oil in barrels and you'll quickly see that the CPI is undercounting by a several percentage points per year. she shadowstat: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts Also, related, check out Nate Hagens work on the Great simplification (he's got a podcast and on youtube). I won't spoil it here but he and his team of scientists have made some very interesting discoveries on future GDP growth.

Aunche 3y ago

> This is largely due to global trade being flat for the past 10 years People are consuming more international goods and more domestic goods, so trade as a percentage of trade relative to GDP has stagnated, but not volume of trade. Since 2008, maritime trade has increased by 3 billion tons or 37% [1]. > Did you know that rent is part of GDP? It's also a component of the inflation, so it cancels out. Housing is getting more expensive, but part of it is that we are consuming more of it than we used to. Home sizes have been growing, but household sizes have been falling [2]. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/264117/tonnage-of-worldwide-maritime-trade-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/264117/tonnage-of-worldw... [2] https://www.thezebra.com/resources/home/median-home-size-in-us/ https://www.thezebra.com/resources/home/median-home-size-in-...

emilyst 3y ago
The first source isn't really accessible unless you have an account. Total exports in terms of adjusted cost _has_ stagnated: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-trade-exports-constant-prices?time=1992..latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-trade-exports-const.... I suspect sheer maritime freight tonnage may be a less reliable proxy due to factors like cost of shipping changes, role of air freight, tariff changes, etc. Maybe share all the trade and globalization graphs instead? https://ourworldindata.org/trade-and-globalization https://ourworldindata.org/trade-and-globalization Your second source, hilariously, predates the entire pandemic (which is when home prices really took off). It also says very little to support your point that we're "consuming more" housing because home sizes are growing. The Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index seems to suggest that home prices were rising only modestly until the pandemic. https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/indices/indicators/sp-corelogic-case-shiller-us-national-home-price-nsa-index/#overview https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/indices/indicators/sp-core...
- Aunche 3y ago
  > Total exports in terms of adjusted cost _has_ stagnated This doesn't seem to match what you'd get by multiplying their figures of inflation-adjusted GDP [1] with their figures of exports as a percentage of GDP [2]. > Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Home prices aren't factored into in either GDP or inflation because they're considered an asset. You're right that the economy has stagnated since the pandemic, especially in America. My point is that it's absurd to suggest that the global economy hasn't grown in the past decade. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-gdp-over-the-last-two-millennia?time=1900..2015 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-gdp-over-the-last-t... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/merchandise-exports-gdp-cepii?time=1981..latest&facet=none&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/merchandise-exports-gdp-c...

vpribish 3y ago

your global trade link stops in 2014, but the world bank shows the trade decline trend continuing to the present [1] you raise concerns about the interpretation of GDP and use trade as a more believable replacement - but how about using manufacturing as a more direct replacement? it seems to have continued it's rising trend through the present. [2] rising by 50% in the last 10 years. this seems to show that growth has not been flat, but has been rising in line with long-term trends. [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS [2] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/manufacturing-output https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/manufacturin...

kieranmaine 3y ago

The data on the global Electricity Mix provides evidence there is an energy transition - https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix

lolc 3y ago
Expanding the view to the whole energy mix, the evidence is minuscule: https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix