Will these chips be made in Arizona, shipped to China or India or Vietnam, put into iPhones or iPads or Macs and those products then shipped to the purchaser?
Not a very environment friendly solution.
When it comes to the supply chain nobody gives a rat’s ass about the environment, least of all Tim Cook. The public has been clamoring to bring the supply chain back, hopefully with jobs. It’s coming back. What’s your problem? I’m being sarcastic about this because it’s a no win, damned if you do, damned if you don’t proposition. As far as the environment goes China is bringing more coal fired power plants online to supply electricity to the factories that make the devices we in the West crave and can’t live without.
Short term. China is also more foresighted than most of the West. They’re investing heavily in nuclear. Both new tech as well as like a billion new power plants. Takes time for them to come online but the coal power plants will be gone at some point in the future.
Oh wow, another CCP propagandist shows their face. Give us a freakin’ break.
Lol. I’m very anti CCP and anti China (under CCP — nothing against the people). Bringing up unfortunate facts that shows how short sighted the west is does not make one a CCP propagandist. I am very critical of countries outsourcing to China, bowing to China, etc.
But they’re not stupid and we need to recognize that. They (China) are going full steam ahead on nuclear energy and will win the economic race while we are messing around with “renewables” which will never be more than a distraction.
China's advantage is their 1.4b people. That's a lot of labor that could be called upon with the right set of programs and incentives. It's also their biggest liability. That's a lot of people to keep happy, a lot of people to feed. Can you imagine 5x more people in the USA? Or 5x more people in Europe? There's going to be consequences. There's going to be a huge technology program just to manage the food, water, and environment to address that.
The type of energy technology is basically irrelevant. If anything, they started their nuclear power program about 10 years too late. There's going to be a good chance that those nuclear plants are going to be stranded assets because they will be too expensive to run. Renewables+storage will be 5x cheaper to run than nuclear in another 10 to 20 years.
Moreover, electricity will be a collection of connected micro-grids in the future, with every household, every neighborhood, every business, being independent of the grid+utility. The biggest purpose of the grid may just be as a vehicle to buy and sell energy. That's basically the only thing I can see keeping an electric grid that connects everything going.
When EVs have vehicle-to-grid as a default feature, another 10 years down the road, that's when the shit hits the fan with the utility. EV V2G, even cheaper solar panels, and long term storage are going to change the entire energy economy and infrastructure.
It appears that China has over counted its population, distorting the data on its birth rate over the last two decades. This leads to one of the very worst case scenarios of a working age population supporting the economy. After that, expect China's population to halve, perhaps as soon as 2050, with China never having "gotten rich before it got old", and never supplanting the U.S. as the World's largest economy. China is likely to be at 750 million while immigration to the U.S. continues to increase our population.
On top of that, there is a retrenchment in the Global economy, driven as much by reaction to Xi's failing policies as by U.S. increasing isolationism. which is why TSMC has been lured to North America; as insurance against an invasion of Taiwan.
None of what you predict for the electrical grid is going to happen. If anything, the U.S. is going to "get religion" and buildout a modern grid, that allows power generated in the Southwest, as an example, to be available during twilight hours of the East Coast, reducing the need for stored power, and the reverse of that for the West waking up.
From the Twitter thread you linked, from Peter Zeihan's tweets themselves: "The newer data suggests China's population will peak somewhere between 2050 and 2070." That means China's population is increasing until 2050 and will perhaps continue to do so out 2070. Be mindful that this is all just estimates on existing birth and death rates, and when Zeihan expects the crossover between birth rate and death rate to occur.
That time frame is entirely dependent on what China does. There definitely needs to be a food and water development program to sustain population growth as the extraction of China's natural resources, heck the world's native and wild resources, is nearing its end. There is only so much resources, land and animals to extract. So vertical farming, agrivoltaics, artificial meat, closed-loop water systems, some type of mechanized aquaculture, whatever will increase production will need to be done to sustain.
Global warming does mean people will be migrating towards the poles. For China, Mongolia's and Siberia's low population density is surely looking tempting right now. You have to question how all this is going to work when there are billions wanting to move there, and Mongolia and Russia are sovereign nations. China can probably maintain in 4° to 6° F world though. It's not going to be pretty though.
For electrical grid, I think the trends are not good for the existing electricity economic structure. Independence from the electrical grid is in sight, and it will be cheaper than the cost of using the grid. It's just solar and storage. PV will get cheaper. EVs will get cheaper. People will be able to make their own gas from solar power for long term storage or use some other method. When this crossover happens, the shit is going to hit the fan. I'm not sure how the grid can be funded, other than as a tax on commerce with energy units across microgrids and generators.
Eventually, even water may be independent from the utility. That will probably be the last thing, but closed loop water recycling with the occasional replenishment will be coming. Not close, maybe 50 to 100 years.
I'll post an earlier link that provides more details, but I don't think that he meant to post that China's population would peak in the 2050 to 2060 timeframe;
He explicitly states that China's population probably peaked a decade ago.
I would like to see his assumptions then. If you assume their current population demographics will hold for the next 30 years or so, it looks like their population would decrease to something like 800m by 2100 per Worldbank or UN. For them to decrease in population by 650m by 2050, that represents a net decrease of 22m per year. That sounds a bit crazy. They are currently at a net +3m people per year to 0m people per depending on who's population counts you believe. That net has to go to -22m right now and stay there for the next 30 years. I would like to hear what he thinks will cause that.
After seeing China's population demographics, I'm convinced that their 1.4b population is basically the peak, give or take the counting uncertainties. At least for the next 30 years. The only discussion is how long the decline will be, ie, what happens to birthrates over the next 30 years. This is where what we assume to happen plays an important factor in declaring this or that. They could maintain, have a slow decline or a fast decline if old age health care goes bad combined with birth rates continuing to decline. It all depends on what they do.
Overall, I'm actually happy to see that a decline is likely because that is a good outcome for everyone including China. Their economic power by shear force of labor power remains great even with a decline. I would hope there would be a decline in India as well.
I think you are absolutely spot on with your observations in this post. I have read @tmay's earlier posts on chinese population declining to 650m by 2050 and it never made any sense to me. May be, @tmay is reading too much of propaganda against China and does not spend enough time thinking through them on what makes sense and what does not. India's population would grow for another 2-3 decades at least before reaching peak and then start going down slowly in the 2nd half of this century.
Demographics is not propaganda, and you comparing Indian's growth to China's doesn't make sense as India has never had a One Child policy.
Now it may be the case that my sources are wrong in their predictions, but there isn't any case to be made that China's population isn't going to rapidly decline. More to the point, China never has had a 1.4 Billon population. It's likely that India has already surpassed China in population.
My comment on India (my country) is just a comment since @tht had mentioned about India as well - it has no connection to the previous line on China.
Let us talk about your population figures for China. Ok, you believe China never had 1.4 Billion population. So, what is the current population of China according to you? You have already mentioned it is projected to decline to 750m (the max number in your posts) by 2050, in just another 28 years. Once you provide the current population value, we can see how the numbers work out.
Will these chips be made in Arizona, shipped to China or India or Vietnam, put into iPhones or iPads or Macs and those products then shipped to the purchaser?
Not a very environment friendly solution.
When it comes to the supply chain nobody gives a rat’s ass about the environment, least of all Tim Cook. The public has been clamoring to bring the supply chain back, hopefully with jobs. It’s coming back. What’s your problem? I’m being sarcastic about this because it’s a no win, damned if you do, damned if you don’t proposition. As far as the environment goes China is bringing more coal fired power plants online to supply electricity to the factories that make the devices we in the West crave and can’t live without.
Short term. China is also more foresighted than most of the West. They’re investing heavily in nuclear. Both new tech as well as like a billion new power plants. Takes time for them to come online but the coal power plants will be gone at some point in the future.
Oh wow, another CCP propagandist shows their face. Give us a freakin’ break.
Lol. I’m very anti CCP and anti China (under CCP — nothing against the people). Bringing up unfortunate facts that shows how short sighted the west is does not make one a CCP propagandist. I am very critical of countries outsourcing to China, bowing to China, etc.
But they’re not stupid and we need to recognize that. They (China) are going full steam ahead on nuclear energy and will win the economic race while we are messing around with “renewables” which will never be more than a distraction.
China's advantage is their 1.4b people. That's a lot of labor that could be called upon with the right set of programs and incentives. It's also their biggest liability. That's a lot of people to keep happy, a lot of people to feed. Can you imagine 5x more people in the USA? Or 5x more people in Europe? There's going to be consequences. There's going to be a huge technology program just to manage the food, water, and environment to address that.
The type of energy technology is basically irrelevant. If anything, they started their nuclear power program about 10 years too late. There's going to be a good chance that those nuclear plants are going to be stranded assets because they will be too expensive to run. Renewables+storage will be 5x cheaper to run than nuclear in another 10 to 20 years.
Moreover, electricity will be a collection of connected micro-grids in the future, with every household, every neighborhood, every business, being independent of the grid+utility. The biggest purpose of the grid may just be as a vehicle to buy and sell energy. That's basically the only thing I can see keeping an electric grid that connects everything going.
When EVs have vehicle-to-grid as a default feature, another 10 years down the road, that's when the shit hits the fan with the utility. EV V2G, even cheaper solar panels, and long term storage are going to change the entire energy economy and infrastructure.
It appears that China has over counted its population, distorting the data on its birth rate over the last two decades. This leads to one of the very worst case scenarios of a working age population supporting the economy. After that, expect China's population to halve, perhaps as soon as 2050, with China never having "gotten rich before it got old", and never supplanting the U.S. as the World's largest economy. China is likely to be at 750 million while immigration to the U.S. continues to increase our population.
On top of that, there is a retrenchment in the Global economy, driven as much by reaction to Xi's failing policies as by U.S. increasing isolationism. which is why TSMC has been lured to North America; as insurance against an invasion of Taiwan.
None of what you predict for the electrical grid is going to happen. If anything, the U.S. is going to "get religion" and buildout a modern grid, that allows power generated in the Southwest, as an example, to be available during twilight hours of the East Coast, reducing the need for stored power, and the reverse of that for the West waking up.
From the Twitter thread you linked, from Peter Zeihan's tweets themselves: "The newer data suggests China's population will peak somewhere between 2050 and 2070." That means China's population is increasing until 2050 and will perhaps continue to do so out 2070. Be mindful that this is all just estimates on existing birth and death rates, and when Zeihan expects the crossover between birth rate and death rate to occur.
That time frame is entirely dependent on what China does. There definitely needs to be a food and water development program to sustain population growth as the extraction of China's natural resources, heck the world's native and wild resources, is nearing its end. There is only so much resources, land and animals to extract. So vertical farming, agrivoltaics, artificial meat, closed-loop water systems, some type of mechanized aquaculture, whatever will increase production will need to be done to sustain.
Global warming does mean people will be migrating towards the poles. For China, Mongolia's and Siberia's low population density is surely looking tempting right now. You have to question how all this is going to work when there are billions wanting to move there, and Mongolia and Russia are sovereign nations. China can probably maintain in 4° to 6° F world though. It's not going to be pretty though.
For electrical grid, I think the trends are not good for the existing electricity economic structure. Independence from the electrical grid is in sight, and it will be cheaper than the cost of using the grid. It's just solar and storage. PV will get cheaper. EVs will get cheaper. People will be able to make their own gas from solar power for long term storage or use some other method. When this crossover happens, the shit is going to hit the fan. I'm not sure how the grid can be funded, other than as a tax on commerce with energy units across microgrids and generators.
Eventually, even water may be independent from the utility. That will probably be the last thing, but closed loop water recycling with the occasional replenishment will be coming. Not close, maybe 50 to 100 years.
I'll post an earlier link that provides more details, but I don't think that he meant to post that China's population would peak in the 2050 to 2060 timeframe;
He explicitly states that China's population probably peaked a decade ago.
I would like to see his assumptions then. If you assume their current population demographics will hold for the next 30 years or so, it looks like their population would decrease to something like 800m by 2100 per Worldbank or UN. For them to decrease in population by 650m by 2050, that represents a net decrease of 22m per year. That sounds a bit crazy. They are currently at a net +3m people per year to 0m people per depending on who's population counts you believe. That net has to go to -22m right now and stay there for the next 30 years. I would like to hear what he thinks will cause that.
After seeing China's population demographics, I'm convinced that their 1.4b population is basically the peak, give or take the counting uncertainties. At least for the next 30 years. The only discussion is how long the decline will be, ie, what happens to birthrates over the next 30 years. This is where what we assume to happen plays an important factor in declaring this or that. They could maintain, have a slow decline or a fast decline if old age health care goes bad combined with birth rates continuing to decline. It all depends on what they do.
Overall, I'm actually happy to see that a decline is likely because that is a good outcome for everyone including China. Their economic power by shear force of labor power remains great even with a decline. I would hope there would be a decline in India as well.
I think you are absolutely spot on with your observations in this post. I have read @tmay's earlier posts on chinese population declining to 650m by 2050 and it never made any sense to me. May be, @tmay is reading too much of propaganda against China and does not spend enough time thinking through them on what makes sense and what does not. India's population would grow for another 2-3 decades at least before reaching peak and then start going down slowly in the 2nd half of this century.
Demographics is not propaganda, and you comparing Indian's growth to China's doesn't make sense as India has never had a One Child policy.
Now it may be the case that my sources are wrong in their predictions, but there isn't any case to be made that China's population isn't going to rapidly decline. More to the point, China never has had a 1.4 Billon population. It's likely that India has already surpassed China in population.
My comment on India (my country) is just a comment since @tht had mentioned about India as well - it has no connection to the previous line on China.
Let us talk about your population figures for China. Ok, you believe China never had 1.4 Billion population. So, what is the current population of China according to you? You have already mentioned it is projected to decline to 750m (the max number in your posts) by 2050, in just another 28 years. Once you provide the current population value, we can see how the numbers work out.
If you don't trust my numbers, then look up your own.
China’s official demographic figures, including the now-cliched “country of 1.4 billion people”, seriously misrepresent the country’s real population landscape. The real size of China’s population could be 115 million fewer than the official number, putting China behind India in terms of population.
This massive error, equal to the combined populations of the United Kingdom and Spain, is a product of China’s rigged population statistics system, influenced by the vested interests of China’s family planning authority.
The population of mainland China was 1,411,778,724[9] as of 1 November 2020.[10]In addition, Hong Kong's population was 7,474,200 (provided by the Hong Kong SAR Government at the end of 2020) and Macau's population was 683,218 (provided by the Macau SAR Government at the end of 2020).
Will these chips be made in Arizona, shipped to China or India or Vietnam, put into iPhones or iPads or Macs and those products then shipped to the purchaser?
Not a very environment friendly solution.
When it comes to the supply chain nobody gives a rat’s ass about the environment, least of all Tim Cook. The public has been clamoring to bring the supply chain back, hopefully with jobs. It’s coming back. What’s your problem? I’m being sarcastic about this because it’s a no win, damned if you do, damned if you don’t proposition. As far as the environment goes China is bringing more coal fired power plants online to supply electricity to the factories that make the devices we in the West crave and can’t live without.
Short term. China is also more foresighted than most of the West. They’re investing heavily in nuclear. Both new tech as well as like a billion new power plants. Takes time for them to come online but the coal power plants will be gone at some point in the future.
Oh wow, another CCP propagandist shows their face. Give us a freakin’ break.
Lol. I’m very anti CCP and anti China (under CCP — nothing against the people). Bringing up unfortunate facts that shows how short sighted the west is does not make one a CCP propagandist. I am very critical of countries outsourcing to China, bowing to China, etc.
But they’re not stupid and we need to recognize that. They (China) are going full steam ahead on nuclear energy and will win the economic race while we are messing around with “renewables” which will never be more than a distraction.
China's advantage is their 1.4b people. That's a lot of labor that could be called upon with the right set of programs and incentives. It's also their biggest liability. That's a lot of people to keep happy, a lot of people to feed. Can you imagine 5x more people in the USA? Or 5x more people in Europe? There's going to be consequences. There's going to be a huge technology program just to manage the food, water, and environment to address that.
The type of energy technology is basically irrelevant. If anything, they started their nuclear power program about 10 years too late. There's going to be a good chance that those nuclear plants are going to be stranded assets because they will be too expensive to run. Renewables+storage will be 5x cheaper to run than nuclear in another 10 to 20 years.
Moreover, electricity will be a collection of connected micro-grids in the future, with every household, every neighborhood, every business, being independent of the grid+utility. The biggest purpose of the grid may just be as a vehicle to buy and sell energy. That's basically the only thing I can see keeping an electric grid that connects everything going.
When EVs have vehicle-to-grid as a default feature, another 10 years down the road, that's when the shit hits the fan with the utility. EV V2G, even cheaper solar panels, and long term storage are going to change the entire energy economy and infrastructure.
It appears that China has over counted its population, distorting the data on its birth rate over the last two decades. This leads to one of the very worst case scenarios of a working age population supporting the economy. After that, expect China's population to halve, perhaps as soon as 2050, with China never having "gotten rich before it got old", and never supplanting the U.S. as the World's largest economy. China is likely to be at 750 million while immigration to the U.S. continues to increase our population.
On top of that, there is a retrenchment in the Global economy, driven as much by reaction to Xi's failing policies as by U.S. increasing isolationism. which is why TSMC has been lured to North America; as insurance against an invasion of Taiwan.
None of what you predict for the electrical grid is going to happen. If anything, the U.S. is going to "get religion" and buildout a modern grid, that allows power generated in the Southwest, as an example, to be available during twilight hours of the East Coast, reducing the need for stored power, and the reverse of that for the West waking up.
From the Twitter thread you linked, from Peter Zeihan's tweets themselves: "The newer data suggests China's population will peak somewhere between 2050 and 2070." That means China's population is increasing until 2050 and will perhaps continue to do so out 2070. Be mindful that this is all just estimates on existing birth and death rates, and when Zeihan expects the crossover between birth rate and death rate to occur.
That time frame is entirely dependent on what China does. There definitely needs to be a food and water development program to sustain population growth as the extraction of China's natural resources, heck the world's native and wild resources, is nearing its end. There is only so much resources, land and animals to extract. So vertical farming, agrivoltaics, artificial meat, closed-loop water systems, some type of mechanized aquaculture, whatever will increase production will need to be done to sustain.
Global warming does mean people will be migrating towards the poles. For China, Mongolia's and Siberia's low population density is surely looking tempting right now. You have to question how all this is going to work when there are billions wanting to move there, and Mongolia and Russia are sovereign nations. China can probably maintain in 4° to 6° F world though. It's not going to be pretty though.
For electrical grid, I think the trends are not good for the existing electricity economic structure. Independence from the electrical grid is in sight, and it will be cheaper than the cost of using the grid. It's just solar and storage. PV will get cheaper. EVs will get cheaper. People will be able to make their own gas from solar power for long term storage or use some other method. When this crossover happens, the shit is going to hit the fan. I'm not sure how the grid can be funded, other than as a tax on commerce with energy units across microgrids and generators.
Eventually, even water may be independent from the utility. That will probably be the last thing, but closed loop water recycling with the occasional replenishment will be coming. Not close, maybe 50 to 100 years.
I'll post an earlier link that provides more details, but I don't think that he meant to post that China's population would peak in the 2050 to 2060 timeframe;
He explicitly states that China's population probably peaked a decade ago.
I would like to see his assumptions then. If you assume their current population demographics will hold for the next 30 years or so, it looks like their population would decrease to something like 800m by 2100 per Worldbank or UN. For them to decrease in population by 650m by 2050, that represents a net decrease of 22m per year. That sounds a bit crazy. They are currently at a net +3m people per year to 0m people per depending on who's population counts you believe. That net has to go to -22m right now and stay there for the next 30 years. I would like to hear what he thinks will cause that.
After seeing China's population demographics, I'm convinced that their 1.4b population is basically the peak, give or take the counting uncertainties. At least for the next 30 years. The only discussion is how long the decline will be, ie, what happens to birthrates over the next 30 years. This is where what we assume to happen plays an important factor in declaring this or that. They could maintain, have a slow decline or a fast decline if old age health care goes bad combined with birth rates continuing to decline. It all depends on what they do.
Overall, I'm actually happy to see that a decline is likely because that is a good outcome for everyone including China. Their economic power by shear force of labor power remains great even with a decline. I would hope there would be a decline in India as well.
I think you are absolutely spot on with your observations in this post. I have read @tmay's earlier posts on chinese population declining to 650m by 2050 and it never made any sense to me. May be, @tmay is reading too much of propaganda against China and does not spend enough time thinking through them on what makes sense and what does not. India's population would grow for another 2-3 decades at least before reaching peak and then start going down slowly in the 2nd half of this century.
Demographics is not propaganda, and you comparing Indian's growth to China's doesn't make sense as India has never had a One Child policy.
Now it may be the case that my sources are wrong in their predictions, but there isn't any case to be made that China's population isn't going to rapidly decline. More to the point, China never has had a 1.4 Billon population. It's likely that India has already surpassed China in population.
My comment on India (my country) is just a comment since @tht had mentioned about India as well - it has no connection to the previous line on China.
Let us talk about your population figures for China. Ok, you believe China never had 1.4 Billion population. So, what is the current population of China according to you? You have already mentioned it is projected to decline to 750m (the max number in your posts) by 2050, in just another 28 years. Once you provide the current population value, we can see how the numbers work out.
If you don't trust my numbers, then look up your own.
China’s official demographic figures, including the now-cliched “country of 1.4 billion people”, seriously misrepresent the country’s real population landscape. The real size of China’s population could be 115 million fewer than the official number, putting China behind India in terms of population.
This massive error, equal to the combined populations of the United Kingdom and Spain, is a product of China’s rigged population statistics system, influenced by the vested interests of China’s family planning authority.
Not propaganda on my part.
Ok, so the current population of China is 1.25 Billion (not 1.4 Billion). To reach 750 million in 28 years, the population has to reduce by 40%. With average life expectancy of 77 years for China, it would take ~31 years from now to reduce the population by 40% with ZERO birthrate. Do you think it is even possible? It would not take more than 2 minutes to perform this simple calculation. A country does not lose 40% of its population in 3 decades in 21st century under normal circumstances. Under extraordinary circumstances, yes it is possible. But expecting that to happen in a normal situation is insane. At least now, do you realize that the source that you are quoting has absolutely ZERO credibility???
I am not accusing you of creating propaganda. Sorry, if my post in any way implied that way. I am saying that someone else is making propaganda against China. And you are repeating the propaganda without any critical evaluation. If you had done the math for just 2 minutes, you would have figured out that the person who claims that China would reach a population of 750 million by 2050 is a propagandist (extremely poor at basic mathematics and has no business talking about population statistics), not a normal person. I think you need to critically evaluate the information that you read, before believing in it.
Will these chips be made in Arizona, shipped to China or India or Vietnam, put into iPhones or iPads or Macs and those products then shipped to the purchaser?
Not a very environment friendly solution.
When it comes to the supply chain nobody gives a rat’s ass about the environment, least of all Tim Cook. The public has been clamoring to bring the supply chain back, hopefully with jobs. It’s coming back. What’s your problem? I’m being sarcastic about this because it’s a no win, damned if you do, damned if you don’t proposition. As far as the environment goes China is bringing more coal fired power plants online to supply electricity to the factories that make the devices we in the West crave and can’t live without.
Short term. China is also more foresighted than most of the West. They’re investing heavily in nuclear. Both new tech as well as like a billion new power plants. Takes time for them to come online but the coal power plants will be gone at some point in the future.
Oh wow, another CCP propagandist shows their face. Give us a freakin’ break.
Lol. I’m very anti CCP and anti China (under CCP — nothing against the people). Bringing up unfortunate facts that shows how short sighted the west is does not make one a CCP propagandist. I am very critical of countries outsourcing to China, bowing to China, etc.
But they’re not stupid and we need to recognize that. They (China) are going full steam ahead on nuclear energy and will win the economic race while we are messing around with “renewables” which will never be more than a distraction.
China's advantage is their 1.4b people. That's a lot of labor that could be called upon with the right set of programs and incentives. It's also their biggest liability. That's a lot of people to keep happy, a lot of people to feed. Can you imagine 5x more people in the USA? Or 5x more people in Europe? There's going to be consequences. There's going to be a huge technology program just to manage the food, water, and environment to address that.
The type of energy technology is basically irrelevant. If anything, they started their nuclear power program about 10 years too late. There's going to be a good chance that those nuclear plants are going to be stranded assets because they will be too expensive to run. Renewables+storage will be 5x cheaper to run than nuclear in another 10 to 20 years.
Moreover, electricity will be a collection of connected micro-grids in the future, with every household, every neighborhood, every business, being independent of the grid+utility. The biggest purpose of the grid may just be as a vehicle to buy and sell energy. That's basically the only thing I can see keeping an electric grid that connects everything going.
When EVs have vehicle-to-grid as a default feature, another 10 years down the road, that's when the shit hits the fan with the utility. EV V2G, even cheaper solar panels, and long term storage are going to change the entire energy economy and infrastructure.
It appears that China has over counted its population, distorting the data on its birth rate over the last two decades. This leads to one of the very worst case scenarios of a working age population supporting the economy. After that, expect China's population to halve, perhaps as soon as 2050, with China never having "gotten rich before it got old", and never supplanting the U.S. as the World's largest economy. China is likely to be at 750 million while immigration to the U.S. continues to increase our population.
On top of that, there is a retrenchment in the Global economy, driven as much by reaction to Xi's failing policies as by U.S. increasing isolationism. which is why TSMC has been lured to North America; as insurance against an invasion of Taiwan.
None of what you predict for the electrical grid is going to happen. If anything, the U.S. is going to "get religion" and buildout a modern grid, that allows power generated in the Southwest, as an example, to be available during twilight hours of the East Coast, reducing the need for stored power, and the reverse of that for the West waking up.
From the Twitter thread you linked, from Peter Zeihan's tweets themselves: "The newer data suggests China's population will peak somewhere between 2050 and 2070." That means China's population is increasing until 2050 and will perhaps continue to do so out 2070. Be mindful that this is all just estimates on existing birth and death rates, and when Zeihan expects the crossover between birth rate and death rate to occur.
That time frame is entirely dependent on what China does. There definitely needs to be a food and water development program to sustain population growth as the extraction of China's natural resources, heck the world's native and wild resources, is nearing its end. There is only so much resources, land and animals to extract. So vertical farming, agrivoltaics, artificial meat, closed-loop water systems, some type of mechanized aquaculture, whatever will increase production will need to be done to sustain.
Global warming does mean people will be migrating towards the poles. For China, Mongolia's and Siberia's low population density is surely looking tempting right now. You have to question how all this is going to work when there are billions wanting to move there, and Mongolia and Russia are sovereign nations. China can probably maintain in 4° to 6° F world though. It's not going to be pretty though.
For electrical grid, I think the trends are not good for the existing electricity economic structure. Independence from the electrical grid is in sight, and it will be cheaper than the cost of using the grid. It's just solar and storage. PV will get cheaper. EVs will get cheaper. People will be able to make their own gas from solar power for long term storage or use some other method. When this crossover happens, the shit is going to hit the fan. I'm not sure how the grid can be funded, other than as a tax on commerce with energy units across microgrids and generators.
Eventually, even water may be independent from the utility. That will probably be the last thing, but closed loop water recycling with the occasional replenishment will be coming. Not close, maybe 50 to 100 years.
I'll post an earlier link that provides more details, but I don't think that he meant to post that China's population would peak in the 2050 to 2060 timeframe;
He explicitly states that China's population probably peaked a decade ago.
I would like to see his assumptions then. If you assume their current population demographics will hold for the next 30 years or so, it looks like their population would decrease to something like 800m by 2100 per Worldbank or UN. For them to decrease in population by 650m by 2050, that represents a net decrease of 22m per year. That sounds a bit crazy. They are currently at a net +3m people per year to 0m people per depending on who's population counts you believe. That net has to go to -22m right now and stay there for the next 30 years. I would like to hear what he thinks will cause that.
After seeing China's population demographics, I'm convinced that their 1.4b population is basically the peak, give or take the counting uncertainties. At least for the next 30 years. The only discussion is how long the decline will be, ie, what happens to birthrates over the next 30 years. This is where what we assume to happen plays an important factor in declaring this or that. They could maintain, have a slow decline or a fast decline if old age health care goes bad combined with birth rates continuing to decline. It all depends on what they do.
Overall, I'm actually happy to see that a decline is likely because that is a good outcome for everyone including China. Their economic power by shear force of labor power remains great even with a decline. I would hope there would be a decline in India as well.
I think you are absolutely spot on with your observations in this post. I have read @tmay's earlier posts on chinese population declining to 650m by 2050 and it never made any sense to me. May be, @tmay is reading too much of propaganda against China and does not spend enough time thinking through them on what makes sense and what does not. India's population would grow for another 2-3 decades at least before reaching peak and then start going down slowly in the 2nd half of this century.
Demographics is not propaganda, and you comparing Indian's growth to China's doesn't make sense as India has never had a One Child policy.
Now it may be the case that my sources are wrong in their predictions, but there isn't any case to be made that China's population isn't going to rapidly decline. More to the point, China never has had a 1.4 Billon population. It's likely that India has already surpassed China in population.
My comment on India (my country) is just a comment since @tht had mentioned about India as well - it has no connection to the previous line on China.
Let us talk about your population figures for China. Ok, you believe China never had 1.4 Billion population. So, what is the current population of China according to you? You have already mentioned it is projected to decline to 750m (the max number in your posts) by 2050, in just another 28 years. Once you provide the current population value, we can see how the numbers work out.
If you don't trust my numbers, then look up your own.
China’s official demographic figures, including the now-cliched “country of 1.4 billion people”, seriously misrepresent the country’s real population landscape. The real size of China’s population could be 115 million fewer than the official number, putting China behind India in terms of population.
This massive error, equal to the combined populations of the United Kingdom and Spain, is a product of China’s rigged population statistics system, influenced by the vested interests of China’s family planning authority.
Not propaganda on my part.
Ok, so the current population of China is 1.25 Billion (not 1.4 Billion). To reach 750 million in 28 years, the population has to reduce by 40%. With average life expectancy of 77 years for China, it would take ~31 years from now to reduce the population by 40% with ZERO birthrate. Do you think it is even possible? It would not take more than 2 minutes to perform this simple calculation. A country does not lose 40% of its population in 3 decades in 21st century under normal circumstances. Under extraordinary circumstances, yes it is possible. But expecting that to happen in a normal situation is insane. At least now, do you realize that the source that you are quoting has absolutely ZERO credibility???
I am not accusing you of creating propaganda. Sorry, if my post in any way implied that way. I am saying that someone else is making propaganda against China. And you are repeating the propaganda without any critical evaluation. If you had done the math for just 2 minutes, you would have figured out that the person who claims that China would reach a population of 750 million by 2050 is a propagandist (extremely poor at basic mathematics and has no business talking about population statistics), not a normal person. I think you need to critically evaluate the information that you read, before believing in it.
First of all, I noted that
"The newer data suggests China's population will peak somewhere between 2050 and 2070."
That should be the timeframe of halving the population, not the peak, as it is likely that the peak has already occurred.
Secondly, my sources also noted that the worst case could be as early as 2050, but certainly, the way things are going under Xi's leadership, no one knows what the worst case might be, but it could include mass numbers of Chinese emigration elsewhere.
Either way, China is in an unprecedented, for the world, population decline.
Will these chips be made in Arizona, shipped to China or India or Vietnam, put into iPhones or iPads or Macs and those products then shipped to the purchaser?
Not a very environment friendly solution.
When it comes to the supply chain nobody gives a rat’s ass about the environment, least of all Tim Cook. The public has been clamoring to bring the supply chain back, hopefully with jobs. It’s coming back. What’s your problem? I’m being sarcastic about this because it’s a no win, damned if you do, damned if you don’t proposition. As far as the environment goes China is bringing more coal fired power plants online to supply electricity to the factories that make the devices we in the West crave and can’t live without.
Short term. China is also more foresighted than most of the West. They’re investing heavily in nuclear. Both new tech as well as like a billion new power plants. Takes time for them to come online but the coal power plants will be gone at some point in the future.
Oh wow, another CCP propagandist shows their face. Give us a freakin’ break.
Lol. I’m very anti CCP and anti China (under CCP — nothing against the people). Bringing up unfortunate facts that shows how short sighted the west is does not make one a CCP propagandist. I am very critical of countries outsourcing to China, bowing to China, etc.
But they’re not stupid and we need to recognize that. They (China) are going full steam ahead on nuclear energy and will win the economic race while we are messing around with “renewables” which will never be more than a distraction.
China's advantage is their 1.4b people. That's a lot of labor that could be called upon with the right set of programs and incentives. It's also their biggest liability. That's a lot of people to keep happy, a lot of people to feed. Can you imagine 5x more people in the USA? Or 5x more people in Europe? There's going to be consequences. There's going to be a huge technology program just to manage the food, water, and environment to address that.
The type of energy technology is basically irrelevant. If anything, they started their nuclear power program about 10 years too late. There's going to be a good chance that those nuclear plants are going to be stranded assets because they will be too expensive to run. Renewables+storage will be 5x cheaper to run than nuclear in another 10 to 20 years.
Moreover, electricity will be a collection of connected micro-grids in the future, with every household, every neighborhood, every business, being independent of the grid+utility. The biggest purpose of the grid may just be as a vehicle to buy and sell energy. That's basically the only thing I can see keeping an electric grid that connects everything going.
When EVs have vehicle-to-grid as a default feature, another 10 years down the road, that's when the shit hits the fan with the utility. EV V2G, even cheaper solar panels, and long term storage are going to change the entire energy economy and infrastructure.
It appears that China has over counted its population, distorting the data on its birth rate over the last two decades. This leads to one of the very worst case scenarios of a working age population supporting the economy. After that, expect China's population to halve, perhaps as soon as 2050, with China never having "gotten rich before it got old", and never supplanting the U.S. as the World's largest economy. China is likely to be at 750 million while immigration to the U.S. continues to increase our population.
On top of that, there is a retrenchment in the Global economy, driven as much by reaction to Xi's failing policies as by U.S. increasing isolationism. which is why TSMC has been lured to North America; as insurance against an invasion of Taiwan.
None of what you predict for the electrical grid is going to happen. If anything, the U.S. is going to "get religion" and buildout a modern grid, that allows power generated in the Southwest, as an example, to be available during twilight hours of the East Coast, reducing the need for stored power, and the reverse of that for the West waking up.
From the Twitter thread you linked, from Peter Zeihan's tweets themselves: "The newer data suggests China's population will peak somewhere between 2050 and 2070." That means China's population is increasing until 2050 and will perhaps continue to do so out 2070. Be mindful that this is all just estimates on existing birth and death rates, and when Zeihan expects the crossover between birth rate and death rate to occur.
That time frame is entirely dependent on what China does. There definitely needs to be a food and water development program to sustain population growth as the extraction of China's natural resources, heck the world's native and wild resources, is nearing its end. There is only so much resources, land and animals to extract. So vertical farming, agrivoltaics, artificial meat, closed-loop water systems, some type of mechanized aquaculture, whatever will increase production will need to be done to sustain.
Global warming does mean people will be migrating towards the poles. For China, Mongolia's and Siberia's low population density is surely looking tempting right now. You have to question how all this is going to work when there are billions wanting to move there, and Mongolia and Russia are sovereign nations. China can probably maintain in 4° to 6° F world though. It's not going to be pretty though.
For electrical grid, I think the trends are not good for the existing electricity economic structure. Independence from the electrical grid is in sight, and it will be cheaper than the cost of using the grid. It's just solar and storage. PV will get cheaper. EVs will get cheaper. People will be able to make their own gas from solar power for long term storage or use some other method. When this crossover happens, the shit is going to hit the fan. I'm not sure how the grid can be funded, other than as a tax on commerce with energy units across microgrids and generators.
Eventually, even water may be independent from the utility. That will probably be the last thing, but closed loop water recycling with the occasional replenishment will be coming. Not close, maybe 50 to 100 years.
I'll post an earlier link that provides more details, but I don't think that he meant to post that China's population would peak in the 2050 to 2060 timeframe;
He explicitly states that China's population probably peaked a decade ago.
I would like to see his assumptions then. If you assume their current population demographics will hold for the next 30 years or so, it looks like their population would decrease to something like 800m by 2100 per Worldbank or UN. For them to decrease in population by 650m by 2050, that represents a net decrease of 22m per year. That sounds a bit crazy. They are currently at a net +3m people per year to 0m people per depending on who's population counts you believe. That net has to go to -22m right now and stay there for the next 30 years. I would like to hear what he thinks will cause that.
After seeing China's population demographics, I'm convinced that their 1.4b population is basically the peak, give or take the counting uncertainties. At least for the next 30 years. The only discussion is how long the decline will be, ie, what happens to birthrates over the next 30 years. This is where what we assume to happen plays an important factor in declaring this or that. They could maintain, have a slow decline or a fast decline if old age health care goes bad combined with birth rates continuing to decline. It all depends on what they do.
Overall, I'm actually happy to see that a decline is likely because that is a good outcome for everyone including China. Their economic power by shear force of labor power remains great even with a decline. I would hope there would be a decline in India as well.
The sources that I quote are using birthrates that are lower than some other sources, true, but there is nothing to indicate today that Chinese women are going to increase their birthrate, over improving their standard of living. This mirrors almost every other developed country in the world.
The issue are the numbers I'm talking about. For China to lose half their population in 30 years, their death rate has to triple, or average -22m per year. The current death rate as of 2020 or so is 7m per year. It will go up. Everyone agrees with that, but places like the World Bank or the UN is thinking more like 10 to 15m per year, so the decline is going to be lot slower than Zeihan is predicting. So, Zeihan has a different set of assumptions I would like to hear. There are some projections that have China holding steady out to 2050, and then growing!
Projections based on human behavior are pretty darn hard to do. Human behavior can cause structural differences that make these projections invalid. Eg, I do think there will be a net migration northward in Asia to more manageable climates. Like China could have a net migration of +5m a year which can maintain their population. It's just a change in policy. There are hundreds of millions of south Asians and southeast Asians that surely would be tempted.
Apple moving a lot of assembly to India and Vietnam seems like a decision based on human capitol, where both India and Vietnam have a of young human capital for work. Old folks just won't be as productive in these long working hours, repetitive labor types of jobs. In the short run of 20 to 30 years, that may be manageable. But, India isn't where I want some big plants to be in 30 years. How are 1.5b people in India's worsening climate and environment going to work? Vietnam may not fare much better.
The Himalayan glaciers and snow pack will be decreasing. The hydrological cycle is going to change. The Red River and the Mekong may not reach Vietnam by then. Those current, very fertile deltas are going to be salted by sea level rise. Similarly, what are Indians going to do with less water flow in their rivers? And it is going to be very very very hot in both places.
Comments
Let us talk about your population figures for China. Ok, you believe China never had 1.4 Billion population. So, what is the current population of China according to you? You have already mentioned it is projected to decline to 750m (the max number in your posts) by 2050, in just another 28 years. Once you provide the current population value, we can see how the numbers work out.
https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3018829/chinas-population-numbers-are-almost-certainly-inflated-hide
Not propaganda on my part.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Chinese_census
Census result[edit]
The population of mainland China was 1,411,778,724[9] as of 1 November 2020.[10]In addition, Hong Kong's population was 7,474,200 (provided by the Hong Kong SAR Government at the end of 2020) and Macau's population was 683,218 (provided by the Macau SAR Government at the end of 2020).
I am not accusing you of creating propaganda. Sorry, if my post in any way implied that way. I am saying that someone else is making propaganda against China. And you are repeating the propaganda without any critical evaluation. If you had done the math for just 2 minutes, you would have figured out that the person who claims that China would reach a population of 750 million by 2050 is a propagandist (extremely poor at basic mathematics and has no business talking about population statistics), not a normal person. I think you need to critically evaluate the information that you read, before believing in it.
That should be the timeframe of halving the population, not the peak, as it is likely that the peak has already occurred.
Secondly, my sources also noted that the worst case could be as early as 2050, but certainly, the way things are going under Xi's leadership, no one knows what the worst case might be, but it could include mass numbers of Chinese emigration elsewhere.
Either way, China is in an unprecedented, for the world, population decline.
Projections based on human behavior are pretty darn hard to do. Human behavior can cause structural differences that make these projections invalid. Eg, I do think there will be a net migration northward in Asia to more manageable climates. Like China could have a net migration of +5m a year which can maintain their population. It's just a change in policy. There are hundreds of millions of south Asians and southeast Asians that surely would be tempted.
Apple moving a lot of assembly to India and Vietnam seems like a decision based on human capitol, where both India and Vietnam have a of young human capital for work. Old folks just won't be as productive in these long working hours, repetitive labor types of jobs. In the short run of 20 to 30 years, that may be manageable. But, India isn't where I want some big plants to be in 30 years. How are 1.5b people in India's worsening climate and environment going to work? Vietnam may not fare much better.
The Himalayan glaciers and snow pack will be decreasing. The hydrological cycle is going to change. The Red River and the Mekong may not reach Vietnam by then. Those current, very fertile deltas are going to be salted by sea level rise. Similarly, what are Indians going to do with less water flow in their rivers? And it is going to be very very very hot in both places.