Doom and Gloom

It's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem.

  - Malcolm Forbes

I’ve come across two stories this week that both predict doom and gloom in one way or another.  The problem with them is that in each case, they assume that one thing will change but nothing else will. 

 

In the first case, the change is climate change.  The story predicts that global warming will reduce the availability of wine by 20%.  That’s quite a bit considering that the consumption of wine is growing each year.  That may not mean much for some of you, but it would be important to wine lovers like myself. The consequence would undoubtedly be much higher prices for even ordinary wine, and possibly wine riots in Italy and California.

The second story concerns the introduction of self-driving electric vehicles.  This story predicts a veritable paradise of convenient, pollution-free, safe urban transportation with no individual vehicle ownership. It all sounds very exciting, particularly anyone who has driven Highway 401 in rush hour.  But then the gloom part is revealed.  The vast shut-downs and unemployment in the automobile sector as conventional vehicles are phased out.  Think about it – hundreds of thousands of engineers and assembly line workers out of work in less than five years according to the author’s predictions. 

Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality.
  - George Santayana

Now, let’s look at these scenarios in terms of how the real world works.  In the case of wine, as long as there is a strong demand for the drink, farmers will find new areas to plant and cultivate grapes as climate change. And vintners will use those grapes to make wine. Take Canada for example, as temperatures rise, new places hospitable to growing grapes could open up in other areas of British Columbia, the Maritimes and west of the Niagara area and north of Prince Edward County.  Other countries could see new areas in places such as France, Germany and even England.  People, particularly farmers, are adaptable and will take advantage of every opportunity where there is a market.

And let’s look at the upcoming “revolution” in transportation.  Currently self-driving cars are hand-built by technicians at Google and Tesla.  Ford, a major vehicle maker, is also rumoured to be working on one, and I wouldn’t be surprised if every other car maker worth their salt aren’t doing the same thing.  Electric vehicles are a bit more mature technology with several car makers mass producing them.  But note that, apart from Tesla, it is major vehicle manufacturers who are in the game.  Let’s note however that Tesla is the only one to currently be combining the two technologies.  Self-driving cars (and a few trucks) are currently being developed and driven only under development licences.  There are not yet any vehicle standards for such vehicles and when there are, you can expect them to be pretty stringent from a safety point of view.  Once such standards are developed and put into practice so that those vehicles can be put into mass production, who will build them?  There are currently about 20 million cars and light trucks built in the world each year. Those hand building technicians can’t possibly build anywhere near those numbers.  These vehicles will be built by the same companies and people who currently do it; major auto makers and their engineers and their assembly line workers.  Internal combustion engine makers will be replaced by battery makers to mass produce the batteries needed for these new vehicles.  There will also be burgeoning enterprises making the millions of recharging stations that will be required.  Just as traditional carburetor manufacturers adjusted by making fuel injection systems, so this new technology will be evolutionary not revolutionary.

Too many prognosticators put forth their ideas without thinking through the logical consequences of those ideas.  As I said at the beginning, you cannot assume that one action will happen without a reaction by other affected people and groups.  It is a particularly a dangerous assumption when demand and money are at stake.

I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.
  - Carl Sagan