Mark Thoma highlighted a recent article, A Crisis at the Edge of Physics. You might wonder why an economist would be interested in a crisis going on in the physics world. For those who don’t follow economics, his explanation is probably not too helpful, “Seems like much the same can be said about modern macroeconomics (except perhaps the ‘given the field its credibility’ part)…” Let me discuss this for a moment, because it is really quite interesting.

As I’ve long speculated, certain kinds of physics are pushing up against the limits of knowledge. High energy physics is destroying particles with more and more energy, leading to ever more bizarre theories of the cosmos. Dark matter and dark energy are showing the cosmos to be mostly “things” we only know don’t seem to exist the way regular matter and energy does, but still interacts with it in unusual ways. Could it be that there is nothing else to know and that theoretical constructs about the universe will not be verifiable through experiment? Some physicists think so, “They criticized a newfound willingness among some scientists to explicitly set aside the need for experimental confirmation of today’s most ambitious cosmic theories — so long as those theories are ‘sufficiently elegant and explanatory.'”

This is shocking because for decades now, scientists have been beating up on postmodern literary theorists who claim that there is no objective truth. And now we have physicists (Of all scientists!) claiming that their theories don’t need to be right but instead just “elegant” and “explanatory.” This has long been the basis for supersymmetry theory. But I have to say, I’m not sure this is the wrong approach. Maybe at the extreme edges of science, experimentation will be useless. Clearly, we should still be doing it — or trying to. But it is possible that we can probe only so far when it comes to the creation of the universe.

This is really interesting, however, in how it relates to economics. Far from looking at things that call into question the universal limits of knowledge, economics deals with pedestrian issues. Economies may be very complicated, but there are no fundamental constraints on understanding them. However, many economists on the right have in fact given up worrying about real world data. They have their Real Business Cycle (RBC) models that are “sufficiently elegant and explanatory” that it doesn’t matter if they have no relationship to the real world.

In the past, I’ve written about my own experience with large scale environmental models. There is a strong urge to get lost in those models — to see them as more real the the world they supposedly model. A good example of this kind of thing in economics is the use of Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models, of which RBC models are part. The idea with these models is to derive macroeconomic outcomes based upon microeconomics. I’m not an economist. But I can tell you that in environmental models, it is usually best to not use micro-scale models in macro-scale models. For example, it is best to model carbon respiration with one big leaf rather than with a detailed forest model. Clearly, there are times when you want a detailed forest model. But in general, macro-scale models are best when they are based on simple empirical models.

And why is that? To me, the biggest issue is that the more elements you add to a model, the more degrees of freedom you add. So you end up with a model that is entirely dependent upon calibration. And the model loses its meaning because its results are swamped by exactly how the calibration is done. What has happened in the RBC models is that economists have given up on modeling the real world and use it just to look for elegance and explanatory power. But it doesn’t matter if the person doing this calls herself a physicist or an economist. She is really just a mathematician — but a particularly useless one.

As I indicated before, this is somewhat defensible with regards to high energy physics and cosmology. These fields are already largely mystical. But in economics — a subject that is supposed to be above all useful — this is just madness.

As many of you know, I live here in the Bay Area of California — you know: the good part. And we are in the middle of the worst drought since well before the rise of the Aztec Empire. So we are looking very seriously at building a greywater system. For those of you who don’t know, greywater is wastewater that comes from pretty much everywhere but your toilet. For example, your dishwater is greywater. You wouldn’t drink it, but it is fine for other uses like watering your plants or for your toilet. It’s all about efficiency: using the water that you have the best way you can.

But whenever the subject of drought comes up, there is always someone who brings up desalination. We’ve got great big oceans. Why not just pull the salt out of it and give it to our cows? People like this idea because we have a long tradition of fixing problems via technology. But there is a general problem with this outlook on life: we have a statistically skewed sample to draw from. We are, after all, the people who survived. Human history is filled with climate changes that wiped out whole regions. And now that we humans are everywhere, we have the potential to wipe ourselves out on a global scale. Will there be “one weird trick” that will save us?

The best solution to our water problems was for us to take global warming seriously starting back about thirty years ago. But given that we can’t even take it seriously today, that is a fanciful thought. And most likely, the solution to the problems associated with global warming will be to combine a lot of different approaches. And desalination will probably be part of that mix. But it certainly isn’t a cure-all. There are many problems with it — and just as many limitations.

As Michael Hiltzik noted “desalination plants can’t be plunked down just anywhere…” The new billion dollar Poseidon plant rejected three other locations before deciding on Carlsbad where it is close to the Encina Power Station. This made it easier to get the energy that it needs and also reduced the environmental impact, since the power station is already doing that. Poseidon’s continued usefulness will depend upon Encina continuing to run (although it is a good bet at least for the foreseeable future).

The biggest problem with desalination plants is that they use a lot of energy. Of course, so does transporting water large distances. The most efficient desalination can actually use less energy. And one would hope over time that this will be more generally true. So sorry Captain Kirk, the pipeline ain’t the way to go. But still, desalination is expensive. According to Hiltzik, one acre-foot (325,851 gallons) of water from Poseidon will cost about $2,200. “San Diego currently pays $923 per acre-foot for treated water from the Metropolitan Water District. The Pacific Institute reported in 2012 that San Diego could obtain recycled water for as little as $1,200 per acre-foot, and that the marginal cost of water obtained through conservation and efficiency measures was as little as $150.”

A direct example will help. Desalination can be as cheap as (pdf) 3 kW·hr/m³. But it is more normally 4-5 kW·hr/m³. Compare this to pumping it out of the ground which costs less (pdf) than 0.2 kW·hr/m³. That makes groundwater at least 16 times cheaper. And this doesn’t take into account the fact that, for example, the Carlsbad facility will be using all hydrocarbon power, which adds to global warming.

Another problem with desalination is that it has other environmental problems. At the start of the process, “Ocean inflows suck up and kill larval marine organisms.” What’s more, all the salt that is taken out of the water must be put back into the ocean — creating areas that are super-salty. This has large environmental effects, at least on a local scale.

I’m not suggesting that desalination should not be pursued as a tool to fight against the many problems that global warming in causing us to face. But it isn’t the cure-all that many people think it is.

This is time. And this is the record of the time.

I used to teach planetary astronomy. The interesting thing about it was how easy it was because of my work in earth sciences. Half the course involved the earth and moon. This is because — and this will surprise some — the earth is a planet. And it is the planet that we know the most about. It is also the planet that we care the most about. So when I started to hear conservatives a few years back grumbling about the fact that NASA spends a lot of resources studying the earth, I just shook my head. Even from the standpoint of exploring other parts of the cosmos, we need to understand the earth.

Of course, no one has a problem with NASA studying the earth. This is just a pretext to stop NASA — or anyone else — from studying global warming. I guess we were wrong all these years we have said that conservatives don’t have a plan to deal with climate change. They do! It is to pretend that it doesn’t exist. And as long as we deny it, it can’t be real. This is the “hide under the blankets until the most productive farm lands turn into deserts” plan. It’s brilliant!

Last Thursday, the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology voted along party lines to cut almost 20% of the current $1.77 billion budget for NASA’s Earth science programs. What’s more, the ranking Democrat on the committee said that the new budget proposal was kept from her and the others in the opposition until less than a week before the vote. She said, “After we saw the bill, we understood why.” As Michael Hiltzik put it, “The budget plan perfectly reflects the House GOP’s glorification of space exploration, which masks its disdain for research on climate change.” Of course, there is a lot more than just global warming research being cut. But what does that matter in the grand cause of denying a problem that fixing might interfere with the profits of certain rich people?

We’ve come a long way since the days when I was working in the field. At that time, the conservative position was, “We don’t know enough. We must do more research.” As a result, Republicans were arguably as good at funding global warming research as the Democrats. But now, the Republicans aren’t skeptics. They “know” that global warming isn’t happening. They’ve seen James Inhofe’s snowball. They once heard that scientists were using a “trick” with tree rings. And Al Gore made money on his documentary. Thus, global warming is a hoax. QED.

This is all deeply disturbing. I want my country back. I don’t mean it in the conservative sense that I want some fanciful notion of “America” that never actually existed. I can remember the America I want back. In it, Republicans commonly used racist appeals to win office. They ran crime syndicates out of the White House. And they were total hypocrites. But they didn’t deny reality. If we had had the modern Republican Party over the last 40 years, the claim that tobacco smoking causes cancer would still be reported as a controversy. The Republican Party really has become something that is a quantum state more dangerous than it used to be.

There were many problems with the founding of the United States. But there is no doubt that it was a political extension of the Enlightenment. But in modern America, we have a major political party — which represents half of our people — that is so done with Enlightenment. It is too liberal for them. They want to go back further — to the Iron Age Middle East. And like all flat earth folks everywhere, they want all the benefits of the Enlightenment — central heating, fresh food, advanced medicines — without any of the responsibilities that go along with them like having to pay attention to facts.

It’s too bad we can’t allow them to go off somewhere and destroy themselves. Instead, we are stuck with them. We are all going down, together.

This is time. And this is the record of the time.