Norway's Economic Success

There's an interesting article in the NYT today. This sentence just about sums it all up:

Norway is a relatively small country with a largely homogeneous population of 4.6 million and the advantages of being a major oil exporter.

The Norwegians have been great managers of their wealth, and I do not wish to take away from their hard work, but their success has much to do with factors essentially outside their control. Norway's homogeneity minimizes the effects of ethnic or religious conflict, while its small population allows for much better management. In addition, it is fortunate because:

1) It is located in a region that has not seen strife in decades.

2) Its relative isolation from the rest of the world, or rather, its relative independence, is something inconceivable for larger countries such as the US. Look at Japan, which is culturally isolationist but whose economic stature nevertheless forces it to engage with the rest of the world more aggressively.

3) It has benefited from the enormous economies of America, Europe, and Asia. Norway, with its moderately sized economy, has much more room to maneuver within the global economy, even in depressed times. Where can America turn to, when its own economy accounts for a quarter of the world's and is in tatters?

Ships in the Port of Singapore

Ok, so this is pretty much one of the most interesting articles I've recently read about the Global Economic Crisis, in large part because of the image I have in my mind of the vast number of ships off Singapore.

Tidbits:

Hundreds of cargo ships — 100,000 to 300,000 tons each, with the larger ones weighing more than the entire 130-ship Spanish Armada — bob so empty that they seem to perch on top of the water rather than in it, their red rudders and bulbous noses, submerged when the vessels are loaded, sticking a dozen feet out of the water.

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So many vessels have flocked to Singapore because it has few storms, excellent ship repair teams, cheap bunker fuel from its own refinery and, most important, proximity to Asian ports that might eventually have cargo to ship.

The gathering of so many freighters “is extraordinary," said Christopher Palsson, a senior consultant at Lloyd’s Register-Fairplay Research, a London-based ship tracking service, "we have probably not witnessed anything like this since the early 1980s,” during the last big bust in the global shipping industr.

The world’s fleet has nearly doubled since the early 1980s, so the tonnage of vessels in and around Singapore’s waters this spring may be the highest ever, he said, cautioning that detailed worldwide ship tracking data has only been available for the last five years.

The Greeks and Persians had more vessels -- around 1,000 triremes -- at the Battle of Salamis in 480 B.C., Kublai Khan had more boats during his attempted invasion of Japan in 1281 and the Allies assembled more ships for the D-Day invasion in 1944. But those vessels were mostly tiny compared with the behemoths here.

These vessels total more than 41 million tons, according to Lloyd’s Register. That is nearly equal to the entire world’s merchant fleet at the end of World War I, and represents almost 4 percent of the world’s fleet today.

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There were 150 vessels in and around the Straits of Gibraltar on Monday, and 300 around Rotterdam, according to Lloyd’s Register.

But Singapore, close to Asian markets, has attracted far more.

“It is a sign of the times,” said Martin Stopford, the managing director of Clarkson Research Service in London, “that Asia is the place you want to hang around this time in case things turn around.”

Full Article Here.

Just incredible. What strikes me is that even examples from military history are inadequate to account for the gathering of ships caused by the economic downturn.

What will global warming look like? Scientists point to Australia

I came across this rather sobering article in the Los Angeles Times today, which offers up Australia as an example of the things to come on a global scale. In their words:

They call Australia the Lucky Country, with good reason. Generations of hardy castoffs tamed the world's driest inhabited continent, created a robust economy and cultivated an image of irresistibly resilient people who can't be held down. Australia exports itself as a place of captivating landscapes, brilliant sunshine, glittering beaches and an enviable lifestyle.

Look again. Climate scientists say Australia -- beset by prolonged drought and deadly bush fires in the south, monsoon flooding and mosquito-borne fevers in the north, widespread wildlife decline, economic collapse in agriculture and killer heat waves -- epitomizes the "accelerated climate crisis" that global warming models have forecast.

With few skeptics among them, Australians appear to be coming to an awakening: Adapt to a rapidly shifting climate, and soon. Scientists here warn that the experience of this island continent is an early cautionary tale for the rest of the world.

"Australia is the harbinger of change," said paleontologist Tim Flannery, Australia's most vocal climate change prophet. "The problems for us are going to be greater. The cost to Australia from climate change is going to be greater than for any developed country. We are already starting to see it. It's tearing apart the life-support system that gives us this world."

Link to the article and images

The article paints a profoundly disheartening picture of the situation facing us all, and that's just as well, since we need such sober assessments to put things in a proper context for us.

This is not the first time that I have read or heard about the plight of farmers in Australia, and the fact that the driest continent is becoming even drier. I did not know about the dire situation in northern parts of the country, however.

What troubles me is the fact that this is happening in one of the richest countries in the world. If Australia is unable to deal with the dire effects of global warming, what will happen to places in Asia and Africa that are just as susceptible as Australia is to the effects of climate change?

Obama looks at climate engineering

The president's new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth's air.

John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort.

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But Holdren noted that shooting particles into the air—making an artificial volcano as one Nobel laureate has suggested—could have grave side effects and would not completely solve all the problems from soaring greenhouse gas emissions. So such actions could not be taken lightly, he said.

Still, "we might get desperate enough to want to use it," he added.

Another geoengineering option he mentioned was the use of so-called artificial trees to suck carbon dioxide—the chief human-caused greenhouse gas—out of the air and store it. At first that seemed prohibitively expensive, but a re-examination of the approach shows it might be less costly, he said.

Here's the link to the full article.

Oh dear, I do not like the idea of this at all. I appreciate the fact that they are looking at all the options, but I cannot fathom how this would be implemented at all. Given that this is something that would affect the whole world, would they seek the acquiescence of all countries in the world, or would the US go it alone? And what if things go wrong?

I find the fact that we have to look at such drastic measures as possible options to be nothing less than a damning statement concerning our abuse of the environment. How could we let things go so far?