Over the past 50 years, there has been a close correlation (0.97) between total energy production and inflation-adjusted GDP in the US. We have seen a slow increase in energy efficiency averaging about 1% per year, but otherwise an increase in GDP generally requires a proportional increase in energy production ( Read more... )

Now I've jumped ahead to the last chapter, where he argues against despair. I'm not sure I'm feeling "despair" about the climate (because the planet has been warmer than this before, and life continued), but he goes after those of us who have accepted that we may not be able to fix this ( Read more... )

"My one-sentence summary of recorded human history is this:

Everything was awful for a very long time, and then the industrial revolution happened."

--Luke Muehlhauser

As he reviews his findings in more detail, he claims:

"The short history of extreme poverty is this: for nearly all of history, nearly everyone lived in extreme poverty."What ( Read more... )

I was talking during dinner about how after Biden wins, Republicans and the Federal Reserve will suddenly decide ( Read more... )