{"id":555,"date":"2011-08-21T11:57:07","date_gmt":"2011-08-21T15:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.synapse9.com\/signals\/?p=555"},"modified":"2013-09-11T09:47:53","modified_gmt":"2013-09-11T14:47:53","slug":"disaster-hidden-by-the-weather-a-larger-toll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/disaster-hidden-by-the-weather-a-larger-toll\/","title":{"rendered":"Disaster Hidden by the Weather, a Larger Toll"},"content":{"rendered":"

Katharine Q. Seelye’s\u00a0“<\/strong>Year Packed With Weather Disasters Has Brought Economic Toll to Match<\/a><\/span>“<\/strong> by was in the NY Times yesterday. \u00a0This is my letter to her.<\/p>\n

———–<\/p>\n

I’m an economic systems physicist, and one of my favorite gold mines for hidden information about events is checking out what\u2019s happening behind the news when more than one natural system of change is involved.\u00a0 How nature\u2019s systems work tends not to be reported, actually hidden from view *within the internal organization of the systems doing the work<\/em>*, so you need to discover them.<\/p>\n

There are two or three different long term trends behind the recent flurry of news about weather related disasters.\u00a0\u00a0 There are the long term trends of climate change and development in hazardous places.\u00a0\u00a0 There\u2019s also a faster changing trend that began recently, also associated with severe weather in the minds of many people.<\/p>\n

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Disasters hit like lightning, like our emerging resource disaster too.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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That\u2019s the world food crisis caused by escalating prices for food and fuel resources around the world,\u00a0only\u00a0really noticeable since about 2004.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Climate change and development on floodplains didn\u2019t begin around 2004, and they are not rapidly accelerating either.<\/p>\n

So there\u2019s a second important phenomenon to consider.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The way I read the evidence (1) is as saying the world economy is increasingly unable to recover from resource supply disruptions.\u00a0\u00a0 Disruptions are have increasing effects that last longer. \u00a0 \u00a0I believe the underlying cause is world resource demand persistently growing faster than supply.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The persistent failure of the world markets to find adequate resource supplies is an emerging economic problem far worse than climate change.\u00a0\u00a0 You could call it our approaching resource bankruptcy.\u00a0\u00a0 Like a bankruptcy it could happen without anyone noticing till vast sectors of the economy start shutting down.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You can even already see the fringes of that happening, sort of like economic gangrene setting in.<\/p>\n

The two obvious examples are the permanent loss of mid-level jobs in the US and the permanent reduction to subsistence of vast populations around the world that were once self-sustaining.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It will get worse till we relieve the fundamental causes of ever growing resource demand.\u00a0\u00a0 One of those, of course, is the world policy to relieve these shortages by stimulating ever growing demand, hoping it will work as in the past.\u00a0 The evidence is it will do quite the opposite.<\/p>\n

1) A decisive moment for Investing in Sustainability<\/a><\/span> –\u00a0as we hit the resource limits of the earth<\/p>\n

2) Blog – Reading Nature’s Signals<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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Katharine Q. Seelye’s\u00a0“Year Packed With Weather Disasters Has Brought Economic Toll to Match“ by was in the NY Times yesterday. \u00a0This is my letter to her. ———– I’m an economic systems physicist, and one of my favorite gold mines for hidden information about events is checking out what\u2019s happening behind the news when more than … Continue reading Disaster Hidden by the Weather, a Larger Toll<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching","category-mail","category-econn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2491,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions\/2491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}