Top all-time · #11553
Darrin Qualman
Personal blog · darrinqualman.comeconomicshistory
Darrin Qualman's personal blog at darrinqualman.com covers economics and history. Since 2019, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 7 times. The last post was in 2020, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Darrin Qualman's posts on methane and climate, fertilizer as a fossil fuel, house size, and long-run economic growth, mostly as sources for their own points.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Author, civilizational critic, long-term thinker, researcher, speaker
Most-linked posts?
- /house-size/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-04-02
What Hacker News says?
A really good review of methane and climate change: https://www.darrinqualman.com/methane/
Comment linking /methane/
on “US emissions fell 2.1% in 2019”Submitted Global Production Transistors as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSociety - with brief exceptions - lived with almost no growth for most of its existence. Since around the 1800s, the utilization of fossil fuels and industrialization, we have been living in such an exception. Eventually, things will revert back to the mean. In the meantime, the higher our society rises and the more it overconsumes the harder the adjustment will be. https://www.darrinqualman.com/2000-years-of-econom…
Comment linking /2000-years-of-economic-growth/
on “The Limits to Growth (1972)”Humanity currently dumps about 2 billion tonnes of waste every year[1]. That's ten thousand times as much as this (projected) figure. And we are currently producing about 400 million tonnes of plastic per year[2], which is itself about two thousand times as much. There is no particular reason to expect all of decommissioned wind turbine waste to get shredded into landfill. The core of modern blades is mainly balsawo…
Comment linking /global-plastics-production/
on “Kids playground built from discarded wind turbine parts (2017)”> Are houses increasing cost due to increase in features? Yes. The limited resource is land, so to maximize profit, developers either have to pack in more units (a strategy often restricted by zoning), or pack as much house onto the same property as possible. The size of stand-alone houses has been steadily growing. It's up by more than 2.5 times since the 50s. [1] And then there are the modern features which used t…
Comment linking /house-size/
on “Washington Can’t Solve a Housing Crisis That Doesn’t Exist”The feed is grown with fertilizers, which are fossil fuel: https://www.darrinqualman.com/historic-nitrogen-fertilizer-c... > In 2015, farmers applied more than 110 million tonnes. We managed to increase grain output fourfold largely by increasing nitrogen inputs 23-fold. Nitrogen fertilizer is a fossil fuel product, made primarily from natural gas.
Comment linking /historic-nitrogen-fertilizer-consumption/
on “Emissions from 13 dairy firms match those of entire UK”One underdiscussed factor when talking about housing prices in the US is that average house size has shot up over the decades. https://www.darrinqualman.com/house-size/ Housing is going to be more expensive if people are buying 2.5x more house.
Comment linking /house-size/
on “In Japan, Home Prices Stay Flat”