Many good points. Re #2: My understanding: Only the methane would be burned, which would only constitute a portion of the carbon from digested kelp. The rest would be sequestered.

#3 - Lots of pressure to shoot water that high; what about sea life at the intakes? How about impacts of larger clouds w/ more moisture?

#10 - What goes into the production of such efficient stoves, and would shipping a billion such units itself add to such unfavorable impacts?

#13 - One caveat is that zero growth would necessitate maintaining 0% inflation (or I suppose deflation might also work), lest the people become insolvent.

#15 - Maintenance will likely drive up costs. Just as windmills have issues with birds, so too would marine turbines have issues with sea life. I’m also curious how much impact large arrays of wind/sea turbines would have on currents: if the infinitesimal impacts of each were multiplied over enough, is that “infinitesimal” impact really so insignificant? Could changing currents have unforseen effects?

#20 - Just reminded me of the “microwave power plant” from SimCity 2000… that is, solar panels in space that beam the energy to ground-level receivers. I could swear there were some articles in science & engineering journals in the late 90s early 2000s about the real-life prospects of such.

…#21 - No mention of fusion research?

While we are currently overproducing CO2 by virtually all estimates, that CO2 contains carbon and oxygen that are essential to life. Ideally plant matter splits them apart into their useful forms but one way or another we can’t just sock the stuff away.

Nor should we forget that the injection ideas assume no ill consequences on the plates we float atop over the earth’s core. Would really suck for our great grandchildren to explain to their grandkids that their house fell down in an earthquake because we fractured the crust or that there didn’t used to be a volcano in Iowa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_geothermal_systems
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/egs_animation.html

…on the other hand, I love the solar-Sahara and ocean lime ideas.

You say: “the root cause of this unproductive growth is the strongly held belief by many that productivity doesnt matter. That so long as there is economic activity, the nature of that activity is irrelevant. Governments write policy with that implicit assumption.”

I think that’s what I was trying to express. Keep in mind though it was a summary of someone else’s views. It might been the use of the word “valuable” that was confusing. The word was intended contextually, if you know what I mean.

More to say on this, but don’t have time to say it right now…

Jeb

Idea 13 is based implicitly on the notion that productivity and growth are distinct. If you take away that notion, it is plain to see that idea 13 really doesnt make sense. Heck, several other ideas in this list would actually create growth if they could be made to happen. Consider more efficient solar panels, if they could be made to generate a usable amount of power, then the net effect would be economic growth because you would be spending less on power then you did previously.

Again, Im sorry if I went to far, but i really believe that it is important to understand why productivity is critical to economic growth, and spending, especially government spending on infrastructure. Note, nothing about this belief invalidates global warming arguments, or the notion that we should build with a mind to dealing with that problem.

I think you might be staring at this one a bit too hard.

But here’s a link to the Guardian’s page for this idea: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/13/manchester-report-consumption

-Jeb (aka “admin”)

Heck, even if you ignore the productivity aspect of the argument, that statement is still not correct, unless you assume that the bike guy takes the money he saves and lights it on fire. There is no reason to assume that the bike guy doesnt do something with the money, and if you believe that economic activity == being a more valuable economic citizen, then the bike dude cant help but be the same as the hummer dude, even if the bike dude just spends the difference on prostitutes and booze.

And consider what happens to those money he saved: they got lent out to some *other* jackass to buy him a hummer! If he saves, then someone has to spend his money.

One way of looking at it is that the biker-dude’s sacrifice (if one wants to consider it that) creates long-run benefits for society only if the banks constrain credit to those that a: can actually repay it, and b: invests it in non-hummer producing companies.

You are correct that the US economy has had growth but ultimately unproductive economic activity. That we had a crash only goes to show why you are wrong to believe that the hummer guy is better for the economy: if his activities are unproductive then he is (at best) simply churning money, and more likely, wasting resources, not adding to the economy. Again, productivity is what matters, not simple spending, and in the hypothetical offered here, the bike guy is more productive, same output using less input.

For god’s sake, the US economy over the past decade or so has been a textbook study of “growth” through ultimately unproductive economic activity. (See: financial industry innovation, housing sector bubble, etc.)

A full size one in operation could transfer heat to the upper atmosphere very quickly and let it dissipate out into space.

How do you figure that? All else being equal, the bike rider produces the same economic output for less energy, making him the more valuable economic citizen, not the other way around.