Thinking about leaving the UK

[brucehoult]

"Free green" energy, e.g. fusion, is problematic for that reason. Any such energy has to go somewhere, and the earth is a (large) black body radiator.

Absolutely true.

The amount of solar energy that hits the Earth is approximately 173,000 terawatts. Our current average global energy consumption is around 20 TW. So we are adding 0.01%.

According to the Stefan-Boltzmann law the total black body radiation from an object is proportional to the 4th power of its absolute temperature. So a 0.01% (10^-4) increase in radiation requires a 10^-16 increase in temperature.

As Earth's average surface temperature is around 15º C (288 K), current human energy output will, at equilibrium, raise the temperature by 0.0000000000000288º C.

That figure overstates the temperature increase by whatever proportion of human energy use consists of capturing and immediately using solar energy i.e. solar, wind, and biofuels.

[tggzzz]

Many successful companies repeatedly "right-size" (ugh!) their employees, and continue to grow economically.

Yes, this is a sad thing, but such "growth" is an illusion. The only time where it seems to work, for a time, is when a company is sweating its assets, and does not need to add new innovations. But it is not sustainable, and eventually the strategy will fail.

Nothing continues forever; in that sense everything fails.

Hence the most important consideration is the time period over which the measurements are made.

For example, my heartrate is anywhere from 220bpm to <1µbpm, depending on the averaging period.

[tggzzz]

"Free green" energy, e.g. fusion, is problematic for that reason. Any such energy has to go somewhere, and the earth is a (large) black body radiator.

Absolutely true.

The amount of solar energy that hits the Earth is approximately 173,000 terawatts. Our current average global energy consumption is around 20 TW. So we are adding 0.01%.

According to the Stefan-Boltzmann law the total black body radiation from an object is proportional to the 4th power of its absolute temperature. So a 0.01% (10^-4) increase in radiation requires a 10^-16 increase in temperature.

As Earth's average surface temperature is around 15º C (288 K), current human energy output will, at equilibrium, raise the temperature by 0.0000000000000288º C.

That figure overstates the temperature increase by whatever proportion of human energy use consists of capturing and immediately using solar energy i.e. solar, wind, and biofuels.

That statement was made in the context of presuming continual (economic) growth at the historic rate. Hint: exponential growth for a long time[1].

Please read the reference I gave with that statement. Here it is again: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/

[1] Economists and politicians infamously can't get their head around what exponential growth means; engineers really ought to understand it instinctively!

[IanB]

Nothing continues forever; in that sense everything fails.

Hence the most important consideration is the time period over which the measurements are made.

For example, my heartrate is anywhere from 220bpm to <1µbpm, depending on the averaging period.

Might it be the case that companies that periodically "right-size" their employees go through a boom-bust cycle, with an overall average growth trend? They reduce the workforce in downturns, and hire again in upturns? Maybe they need to learn something from engineering, resonance, and Q-factors (another thread)? Maybe they should employ appropriate levels of damping to avoid such oscillation? But how could they, if the management are MBAs and not engineers?

[CatalinaWOW]

Is the system controllable and observable?  If so does any entity have control of all of the necessary control inputs?  I am not sure that those with control system educations are in much better position to run the machine than the MBAs.

[brucehoult]

"Free green" energy, e.g. fusion, is problematic for that reason. Any such energy has to go somewhere, and the earth is a (large) black body radiator.

Absolutely true.

The amount of solar energy that hits the Earth is approximately 173,000 terawatts. Our current average global energy consumption is around 20 TW. So we are adding 0.01%.

According to the Stefan-Boltzmann law the total black body radiation from an object is proportional to the 4th power of its absolute temperature. So a 0.01% (10^-4) increase in radiation requires a 10^-16 increase in temperature.

As Earth's average surface temperature is around 15º C (288 K), current human energy output will, at equilibrium, raise the temperature by 0.0000000000000288º C.

That figure overstates the temperature increase by whatever proportion of human energy use consists of capturing and immediately using solar energy i.e. solar, wind, and biofuels.

That statement was made in the context of presuming continual (economic) growth at the historic rate. Hint: exponential growth for a long time[1].

Please read the reference I gave with that statement. Here it is again: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/

[1] Economists and politicians infamously can't get their head around what exponential growth means; engineers really ought to understand it instinctively!

Yes, I read it.

"The upshot is that at a 2.3% growth rate (conveniently chosen to represent a 10× increase every century), we would reach boiling temperature in about 400 years."

After 400 years, under this assumption, we would be using 10,000 times more energy than at present i.e. 200,000 TW, or yes approximately the same amount of energy as received from the sun. So a doubled energy budget to reject thermally needs 1.19x the current temperature (288), or 343 K (70 C).

That's not boiling but it would indeed be unpleasant.

But I'm not at all sure I accept the 2.3% total energy growth rate.

Between the years 1000 and 2000 the average population growth rate was 0.3%. The previous 1000 years more more like 0.05% per annum. In the 1960s and 1970s population grew at 2% a year, since 2000 it's been under 1%, and everyone seems to agree the population growth rate is going to hit 0% or even negative in the coming decades.

So population growth has been a fairly significant component of energy use growth, and that's going away.

We are left with per-capita energy use growth.

I really really don't see how per capita energy use is going to grow exponentially.

Let's concentrate on the 1st world.  We can assume the 3rd world will in time catch up to the 1st world, per capita, but that's a one-off. The world per capita energy use is about 21,000 kWh/year. NZ and Austria (not Australia) are around twice that, the nordic countries, Russia, Australia are around 3x (I assume mostly heating/cooling of buildings), USA nearly 4x and Canada 5x. UAE and Singapore are 7x and 8x, Qatar is 11x (or 3x the USA).

Where is energy use growth over the current usage of Qatar going to come from?

The article discusses food. I can't see how we're going to want exponentially more expensive food. We're certainly not going to eat exponentially more calories. Beef is supposedly the most energy-intensive food (at least major food). Ok, so everyone starts eating the finest steaks 3x a day. What then?

Once all your buildings are kept at your preferred 21 C or 23 C or whatever all year, in every climate ... what then? A/C gets more efficient, insulation gets better.

Gadgets? I dunno. Most things except TVs are getting smaller, with less material in them.

Transportation? Modern cars and airliners are, roughly speaking, equally efficient per passenger km, and are getting better. Even if we all start travelling anywhere in the world in 90 minutes by rocket, the energy use of a rocket trip (to anywhere) is similar to flying between Los Angeles and Sydney. We all start commuting to work or shopping on the opposite side of the planet by rocket? Ok. That's a lot higher energy use on transportation than today -- a daily circumnavigation of the Earth is 1000x more distance (let's call that energy) than today's typical 10k miles / 15k km driven -- but I don't see how it can increase beyond that. The article is assuming we're staying on this one planet, right?

Airlines do already exist. Before COVID we reached around 1000 km of annual airline travel per capita -- or around 10,000 km per person in the 1st world, roughly similar to the level of travel by car.

At the moment transportation is about 25% of total global energy use. Under the assumptions in the last paragraph (or anything remotely close to them) it could come to dominate. But even it has absolute limits on a per capita basis. And I don't think it will ever get anywhere near that 1000x current 1st world levels. One world trip per month, maybe, not daily. So, 15x current average levels, increasing total per capita energy use to around 4x current levels.

So again: where is long term exponential per capita energy use going to come from?

[tggzzz]

"Free green" energy, e.g. fusion, is problematic for that reason. Any such energy has to go somewhere, and the earth is a (large) black body radiator.

Absolutely true.

The amount of solar energy that hits the Earth is approximately 173,000 terawatts. Our current average global energy consumption is around 20 TW. So we are adding 0.01%.

According to the Stefan-Boltzmann law the total black body radiation from an object is proportional to the 4th power of its absolute temperature. So a 0.01% (10^-4) increase in radiation requires a 10^-16 increase in temperature.

As Earth's average surface temperature is around 15º C (288 K), current human energy output will, at equilibrium, raise the temperature by 0.0000000000000288º C.

That figure overstates the temperature increase by whatever proportion of human energy use consists of capturing and immediately using solar energy i.e. solar, wind, and biofuels.

That statement was made in the context of presuming continual (economic) growth at the historic rate. Hint: exponential growth for a long time[1].

Please read the reference I gave with that statement. Here it is again: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/

[1] Economists and politicians infamously can't get their head around what exponential growth means; engineers really ought to understand it instinctively!

Yes, I read it.

"The upshot is that at a 2.3% growth rate (conveniently chosen to represent a 10× increase every century), we would reach boiling temperature in about 400 years."

After 400 years, under this assumption, we would be using 10,000 times more energy than at present i.e. 200,000 TW, or yes approximately the same amount of energy as received from the sun. So a doubled energy budget to reject thermally needs 1.19x the current temperature (288), or 343 K (70 C).

That's not boiling but it would indeed be unpleasant.

But I'm not at all sure I accept the 2.3% total energy growth rate.

Between the years 1000 and 2000 the average population growth rate was 0.3%. The previous 1000 years more more like 0.05% per annum. In the 1960s and 1970s population grew at 2% a year, since 2000 it's been under 1%, and everyone seems to agree the population growth rate is going to hit 0% or even negative in the coming decades.

So population growth has been a fairly significant component of energy use growth, and that's going away.

We are left with per-capita energy use growth.

I really really don't see how per capita energy use is going to grow exponentially.

Let's concentrate on the 1st world.  We can assume the 3rd world will in time catch up to the 1st world, per capita, but that's a one-off. The world per capita energy use is about 21,000 kWh/year. NZ and Austria (not Australia) are around twice that, the nordic countries, Russia, Australia are around 3x (I assume mostly heating/cooling of buildings), USA nearly 4x and Canada 5x. UAE and Singapore are 7x and 8x, Qatar is 11x (or 3x the USA).

Where is energy use growth over the current usage of Qatar going to come from?

The article discusses food. I can't see how we're going to want exponentially more expensive food. We're certainly not going to eat exponentially more calories. Beef is supposedly the most energy-intensive food (at least major food). Ok, so everyone starts eating the finest steaks 3x a day. What then?

Once all your buildings are kept at your preferred 21 C or 23 C or whatever all year, in every climate ... what then? A/C gets more efficient, insulation gets better.

Gadgets? I dunno. Most things except TVs are getting smaller, with less material in them.

Transportation? Modern cars and airliners are, roughly speaking, equally efficient per passenger km, and are getting better. Even if we all start travelling anywhere in the world in 90 minutes by rocket, the energy use of a rocket trip (to anywhere) is similar to flying between Los Angeles and Sydney. We all start commuting to work or shopping on the opposite side of the planet by rocket? Ok. That's a lot higher energy use on transportation than today -- a daily circumnavigation of the Earth is 1000x more distance (let's call that energy) than today's typical 10k miles / 15k km driven -- but I don't see how it can increase beyond that. The article is assuming we're staying on this one planet, right?

Airlines do already exist. Before COVID we reached around 1000 km of annual airline travel per capita -- or around 10,000 km per person in the 1st world, roughly similar to the level of travel by car.

At the moment transportation is about 25% of total global energy use. Under the assumptions in the last paragraph (or anything remotely close to them) it could come to dominate. But even it has absolute limits on a per capita basis. And I don't think it will ever get anywhere near that 1000x current 1st world levels. One world trip per month, maybe, not daily. So, 15x current average levels, increasing total per capita energy use to around 4x current levels.

So again: where is long term exponential per capita energy use going to come from?

The article is a gedankenexperiment aiming to illustrate what cannot happen. Hence arguing that some of the conjectures don't represent a plausible future is entirely missing the point!

The objective is to force economists to understand that their cherished beliefs and theories cannot be valid in the long term. After they realise that, perhaps they will develop theories that do not presume/require continual growth Or not

It is about energy growth rather than energy per capita growth.

[coppice]

You don't say it will lead to growth, but you appear to identify it as a pre-requisite.

Exactly.

"If I want to increase muscle mass, I will need to eat more protein"  => True statement

"If I eat more protein, I will increase muscle mass" => False statement

If I want to make more steel I need more iron ore. If I want to grow economically making steel I need to put intellectual effort into high grade steel, as well as accessing iron ore, where I get a decent margin. Otherwise I am in the commodity business, hovering around break even, and no genuine growth occurs. I am merely keeping more people as the same horrible subsistence level. There are measures of actual growth, and there's treating cancer as growth.

[coppice]

Please read the reference I gave with that statement. Here it is again: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/

That guy is quite pragmatic and good to read. Be very careful what economists say about growth, and the potential for growth over the next century or so. They draw some wacky conclusions, mostly hinging on the relevance of cheap abundant energy. They barely factor energy into their thinking, so they draw conclusions like a small difference in outcomes, whether we see massive climate change or not, and whether we have cheap abundant energy or not. People who think human demand for energy, regardless of whether it is actually available, will not just keep increasing are just luddites, unable to see the opportunities more energy brings, and only seeing things in terms of today's activities. In the last half century it would appear efficiency gains in insulation, more efficient engines, telecoms reducing the need for travel, and so on would have somewhat reduced overall energy consumption in developed countries. It hasn't. The only reason a country like England seems to have reduced a bit is all its heavy industries have collapsed, and the energy to make England's stuff is now used in China, India and elsewhere.

[Zero999]

Recently?!

The country has been going to the dogs for the last three decades and I'm very, very happy that I no longer live there.

Arguably, since WW2, with a brief respite due to Thatcher. (which of course ended a little over three decades ago)

"Milk snatcher" Thatcher's housing reforms set up the conditions which have lead to the recent riots here.

That isn't even true. Thatcher was against the abolition of free milk in school.

Thatcher the milk snatcher

The nickname was coined by Labour in opposition and the press after the government abolished free school milk for over-sevens in 1970 when Margaret Thatcher was education secretary.

But according to her memoirs and archives, Lady Thatcher herself had argued in cabinet against getting rid of free milk altogether. It was a policy driven by the Treasury, first under Iain Macleod, then Anthony Barber.

So in Barber’s first budget of October 1970, the policy was limited to children above the age of seven, and special schools and children with medical needs were excluded.

https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-the-thatcher-myths

Nonetheless - as your reference and others state - she was the education secretary and she did remove free milk from schoolchildren.

Actions speak louder than words.

Blair policy of mass immigration, which the recent Tory government continued, is also responsible for the riots. It turns out that people are tribal and introducing people with vastly different cultural values, at a rate, faster than they can assimilate, creates social tensions.

That's merely another attempt to deflect attention from the points. That constitutes a strawman argument.

Why do you think it's a strawman?

Sigh. See emphasised quote

We could talk about Thatcher, but not all of what she did was bad and she isn't the only person, who's responsible for the current state of affairs. It's simply false to blame all of this on one person.

Sigh.

Please point to where I said everything she did was bad.
Please point to where I said nobody else did anything bad.

Since you can't, those are more strawman arguments.

I didn't say that you said she everything she did was bad, nor that no one else did anything bad. I admit, I wasn't direct enough. What I should have said was, you're mistaken that her housing reforms were the primary cause of the current housing shortage. They might not have helped, but the main cause of the current housing shortage is huge increase in demand, thanks to the population rise due to mass migration, which was ramped up during the Blair era. The current civil unrest is also triggered by people fearing for their children's safety, rather than housing.

Not according to the UK courts.

There are many causes for the current dysfunctional housing market. I have yet to see a numerical estimate of the numbers attributable to each cause. For example, my daughter was a severley affected by one cause, as were half a dozen of her friends. (No, not migration related).

To concentrate all attention on any single cause is stupid, even though it is politically expedient.

The fact the riots started outside a Mosque and after three girls were brutally murdered by a second generation immigrant, indicates that immigration was the prime concern.

No, you are the one using a logical fallacy. More people does not mean growth.

I have never said that more people means growth. I have not edited any of my posts above. Please find and quote where I said what you think I said, and then let other people tell you that you are mistaken.

Then how am I expected to read:

You have a situation that the UK birthrate has been declining for decades, but economic growth is not possible without an increasing workforce, so migration is necessary to make up for the lack of organic population growth.

You don't say it will lead to growth, but you appear to identify it as a pre-requisite.

Why do we need growth?

Living standards and productivity are far more important. The UK is hardly unique in having a sub replacement birth rate. Other countries are in a similar position and are doing very well without bringing in workers from low wage economies.

[coppice]

Why do we need growth?

Living standards and productivity are far more important. The UK is hardly unique in having a sub replacement birth rate. Other countries are in a similar position and are doing very well without bringing in workers from low wage economies.

Real growth is growth in productivity, and good living standards require that growth. Any other kind of growth is one group sucking the blood of another and growing at its expense. A zero sum (or even less than zero) scramble for scarce resources.

[tggzzz]

Why do we need growth?

Living standards and productivity are far more important. The UK is hardly unique in having a sub replacement birth rate. Other countries are in a similar position and are doing very well without bringing in workers from low wage economies.

Real growth is growth in productivity, and good living standards require that growth. Any other kind of growth is one group sucking the blood of another and growing at its expense. A zero sum (or even less than zero) scramble for scarce resources.

.

This is rapidly approaching No True Scotsman territory.

Unreal growth (c.f. the emotional but equally meaningless real growth) can be achieved by "working smarter not harder".

[coppice]

Why do we need growth?

Living standards and productivity are far more important. The UK is hardly unique in having a sub replacement birth rate. Other countries are in a similar position and are doing very well without bringing in workers from low wage economies.

Real growth is growth in productivity, and good living standards require that growth. Any other kind of growth is one group sucking the blood of another and growing at its expense. A zero sum (or even less than zero) scramble for scarce resources.

.

This is rapidly approaching No True Scotsman territory.

Unreal growth (c.f. the emotional but equally meaningless real growth) can be achieved by "working smarter not harder".

Working harder and working smarter are both ways to increase productivity, and represent real growth, although I personally prefer smarter rather than harder.

[IanB]

Working harder and working smarter are both ways to increase productivity, and represent real growth, although I personally prefer smarter rather than harder.

Working smarter is pretty difficult if you have a lack of smarts. And if you want to increase the quota of smarts in your company, you have to hire more smart people.

[nctnico]

Working harder and working smarter are both ways to increase productivity, and represent real growth, although I personally prefer smarter rather than harder.

Working smarter is pretty difficult if you have a lack of smarts. And if you want to increase the quota of smarts in your company, you have to hire more smart people.

I read an interesting article about Greece a while back . Although they seem to do OK economically, the output per person is quite low because there are so many small companies each with lots of overhead. A few big companies would make the Greek work much more efficient and increase the output per person.

[IanB]

I read an interesting article about Greece a while back . Although they seem to do OK economically, the output per person is quite low because there are so many small companies each with lots of overhead. A few big companies would make the Greek work much more efficient and increase the output per person.

That's one perspective. But you also have to look at how big companies tend to be burdened by process and bureaucracy. It becomes hard to get decisions made and actions approved, and waste increases due to slowness and missed opportunities.

[coppice]

I read an interesting article about Greece a while back . Although they seem to do OK economically, the output per person is quite low because there are so many small companies each with lots of overhead. A few big companies would make the Greek work much more efficient and increase the output per person.

That's one perspective. But you also have to look at how big companies tend to be burdened by process and bureaucracy. It becomes hard to get decisions made and actions approved, and waste increases due to slowness and missed opportunities.

Whilst big companies tend to have a large bureaucratic burden, the economies that scale brings usually outweigh this, and they can make life hard for small businesses. Most small businesses that do very well try to operate in ways that avoid a head on competition with someone big.

[SiliconWizard]

Of course growth can be defined in various ways. But the way we usually define it as far as economy goes is the more money circulates, the higher the growth. Is there really anything else to it? Isn't that what GDP is all about ultimately?

The amount of money in circulation is in itself no indication that things are being made more efficiently or more "productively". Actually, economic growth is rather closely related to the growth of energy consumption. In some ways, "economic growth" as the current indicator we use and efficiency are at best orthogonal and at worst, antagonistic. Just a thought.

[coppice]

Working harder and working smarter are both ways to increase productivity, and represent real growth, although I personally prefer smarter rather than harder.

Working smarter is pretty difficult if you have a lack of smarts. And if you want to increase the quota of smarts in your company, you have to hire more smart people.

You need some smart people, but if they applied effectively they make large numbers of others more productive. It happens with human power being multiplied with machines. It happens with automated plant that just needs monitoring by humans. It happens with computers eliminating admin roles.... oh wait. before computers a few percent of jobs were some kind of admin. Now we've automated much of the admin work, and we see 30-35% of the people in many sectors are in admin roles. Maybe something is broken.

[Benta]

I feel sorry for the OP, but he's long gone.
Jeez, talk about people thread hijacking and riding hobby horses...

[Siwastaja]

I feel sorry for the OP, but he's long gone.
Jeez, talk about people thread hijacking and riding hobby horses...

You could have chosen to improve the thread by writing on-topic reply, but instead you chose to contribute to the noise by writing zero-content reply.

[m k]

Situation start side tracking around page 3 and OP take a step back at page 4, after that the topic is sort of free.

I'd say that topic is still pretty much on the issue, how it is to live abroad, though occasionally quite a wide take.

[Zero999]

Working harder and working smarter are both ways to increase productivity, and represent real growth, although I personally prefer smarter rather than harder.

Working smarter is pretty difficult if you have a lack of smarts. And if you want to increase the quota of smarts in your company, you have to hire more smart people.

You need some smart people, but if they applied effectively they make large numbers of others more productive. It happens with human power being multiplied with machines. It happens with automated plant that just needs monitoring by humans. It happens with computers eliminating admin roles.... oh wait. before computers a few percent of jobs were some kind of admin. Now we've automated much of the admin work, and we see 30-35% of the people in many sectors are in admin roles. Maybe something is broken.

This is one of the problems we have here. Not everyone is equal. Many educated people are leaving, whilst the majority of those coming here are not so skilled. Given this is a technical forum, I presume the original poster is more skilled and educated than average.

It all comes down to why leave?

I can understand the reasons: lack if of job opportunities, expensive housing, fear of being a victim of crime, dirty streets, crappy climate.

And as far as staying: family, difficulty learning a new language and adapting to a different culture.

The original poster could also consider moving within the UK. Perhaps somewhere with cheaper housing, in an area with a low crime rate.

Remote working is also more popular now. If you can just go to the office once a week or so, then perhaps it's more tolerable to live further away from work. Also consider renting a shared accommodation during the week and going back home at the weekend. Perhaps buying a camper van is an option.

[Bud]

Also consider renting a shared accommodation during the week and going back home at the weekend. Perhaps buying a camper van is an option.

I can't imagine living like that.... is that a thing in the UK ? 

[Monkeh]

Also consider renting a shared accommodation during the week and going back home at the weekend. Perhaps buying a camper van is an option.

I can't imagine living like that.... is that a thing in the UK ? 

It's a thing in a lot of places. Even Canada.