Limits to Growth Model Worth Another Look
Posted by David Murphy on April 25, 2009 - 9:55am
This post relates to an article written by my advisor Charles Hall and a close friend of his. The article is available from American Scientist (paywall) or from Professor Hall's web site.
There are only finite resources in the world, but population continues to grow. How will this situation resolve itself? This was a question a group of scientists (Meadows et al), commissioned by the "Club of Rome," attempted to answer back in 1972, in a book called Limits to Growth. The model they presented predicted growing resource scarcity, increasing pollution, and eventual population decline, all prior to 2100.
Charles A. S. Hall and John W. Day revisit these predictions in an article published this month in American Scientist called Revisiting the Limits to Growth After Peak Oil. Their analysis indicates that the predictions from 1972 were surprisingly accurate, considering how long ago they were made:
According to Hall and Day, "The values predicted by the limits-to-growth model and actual data for 2008 are very close."
Hall and Day immediately acknowledge that the academic world has paid most attention to human impacts on biodiversity and climate change and not enough on general resource issues. They believe that there are numerous resource issues related to peak oil that are “coming home to roost” and that all of these issues were laid out quite accurately in 1972 in the Limits to Growth model. They write:
As many continue to dismiss what those researchers in the 1970s wrote, there is growing evidence that the original “Cassandras” were right on the mark in their general assessment, if not always in the details or exact timing, about the dangers of the continued growth of human population and their increasing levels of consumption in a world increasingly approaching very real material constraints. It is time to reconsider their arguments in light of new information, especially about peak oil.
According to the authors, there has been widespread belief that the original 1972 forecast was incorrect:
Economists particularly disliked the perspective of the absolute scarcity of resources, and they wrote a series of scathing reports directed at the scientists mentioned above, especially those most closely associated with the limits to growth. Nuclear fusion was cited as a contender for the next source of abundant, cheap energy. They also found no evidence for scarcity, saying that output had been rising between 1.5 and 3 percent per year. Most importantly, they said that economies had built-in, market-related mechanisms (the invisible hand of Adam Smith) to deal with scarcities.
An important empirical study by economists Harold J. Barnett and Chandler Morse in 1963 seemed to show that, when corrected for inflation, the prices of all basic resources (except for forest products) had not increased over nine decades. Thus, although there was little argument that the higher-quality resources were being depleted, it seemed that technical innovations and resource substitutions, driven by market incentives, had and would continue indefinitely to solve the longer-term issues. It was as if the market could increase the quantity of physical resources in the Earth.
But analyses since then have proven these arguments false. According to the authors,
For example, Cutler J. Cleveland, an environmental scientist at Boston University, reanalyzed the Barnett and Morse study in 1991 and found that the only reason that the prices of commodities had not been increasing—even while their highest quality stocks were being depleted—was that for the time period analyzed in the original study, the real price of energy had been declining because of the exponentially increasing use of oil, gas and coal, whose real prices were simultaneously declining. Hence, even as more and more energy was needed to win each unit of resources, the price of the resources did not increase because the price of energy was declining.
Of course, the time period since the study has been very different, with less growth in resources and higher prices, showing that Barnett and Morse's conclusions did not hold for the long term.
Another reason that some believed Limits to Growth was wrong was confusion over what one summary graph showed. The graph shows dates only at the two end points--1900 and 2100--so was somewhat confusing to read. A graph of the forecast, with more intermediate dates, is shown below:
According to Hall and Day, this forecast is "largely accurate" to date. "We are not aware of any model made by economists that is as accurate over such a long time span." We cannot know at this time how accurate future projections will prove to be.
Another reason people have been reluctant to believe forecasts predicting shortages is because the forecast of Thomas Malthus back in 1798 proved wrong. Malthus predicted that population would grow more rapidly than food supply, resulting in starvation. A major reason he was wrong was because of the growth in the use in fossil fuels, and the resulting increase in food production.
Looking to the future, the authors see peak oil to be a key issue:
. . . a key issue for the future is the degree to which fossil and other fuels will continue to be abundant and cheap. Together oil and natural gas supply nearly two-thirds of the energy used in the world, and coal another 20 percent. We do not live in an information age, or a post-industrial age, or (yet) a solar age, but a petroleum age. Unfortunately, that will soon end: It appears that oil and gas production has reached, or soon will reach, a maximum. . .
Most environmental science textbooks focus far more on the adverse impacts of fossil fuels than on the implications of our overwhelming economic and even nutritional dependence on them. The failure today to bring the potential reality and implications of peak oil, indeed of peak everything, into scientific discourse and teaching is a grave threat to industrial society.
Charles Hall can be reached at "chall at esf dot edu"; the author of this post, Dave Murphy (aka EROI Guy), can be reached at "theoildrumeroi at gmail dot com".
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Thanks, Dave, for bringing this important article to our attention. Readers are encouraged to write about the article on their own blogs, and to pass along links to this post to news media.
The graph is very revealing. I can certainly understand the drop in resources and the expected (but not absolutely certain) drop in Industrial Output that would accompany it (recycling is a largely untapped source of many resources for example). However, I have trouble believing that pollution would accelerate so dramatically even in the face of rapidly declining industrial output and energy (and initially at least in the face of declining population). The demographic transition is well underway in all industrialized societies (that is the reason for the drop in the birthrate, even in India). A rapid drop in birthrate means a rapid aging of the population (unless the death rate accelerates and that has not yet happened). Take a look at Europe and Japan for examples of this (dramatic drop in school age population for example). Rapidly aging populations change their resource utilization and pollution emission patterns. For example, even now, I as a middle-aged person have dropped my resource utilization and the majority of the resources I use are directed at my children. As they leave the home, my resource utilization will drop by at least another factor of 2 (probably more like 5 times). Retired people usually use much less resources than young people starting families. I do not know if the authors have taken this into account, but pollution intensity should probably drop as well (as least I would think).
What do you think?
Iwylie
The pollution issue is one that the model does not seem to be matching as well on.
The pollution issue is not yet clear, but the model may turn out to be more accurate than we expect. Some considerations that come to mind:
1. In recent years, pollution has shifted from the developed countries to the lesser developed countries, where we see the pollution less, but it probably affects more people.
2. As we have less resources in the future, pollution control may be one of the first things to go. There seem to be fairly abundant coal resources, especially if the lowest grade ores are considered. These are very cheap to burn, especially if one does absolutely no pollution control. Burning of wood and of dung as fuel also has pollution issues.
3. Cumulative pollution is probably as important as point in time pollution. If our lakes are filled with mercury and cannot be used to support fishing, it doesn't matter whether that pollution happened last week or fifty years ago.
Not to shake the hornet's nest, but CO2 and other GHG are pollution.
As the capacity of natural systems to absorb industrial excesses declines, pollution will become more visible. E.g., oceanic dead zones, acidification, and coral bleaching. Then add indirect effects like increasing methane release from melting tundra.
-- Philip B. / Washington, DC
For ecosystems, as for individual life forms, there are many things that are essential but are toxic in sufficient quantity (e.g. water, oxygen). The issue is the dose. Pollution is set in the public mind as referring to stuff that has no positive value at any dose.
Pollution has been dramatically reduced since the environmental movement in the 1960-1970’s.
Some highlights:
*Limits to discharge to both air and water of heavy metals, BOD and other harmful chemicals by industry
*Reduction in acid rain from using lower sulfur coal plus scrubbers
*Banning or restricting persistent pesticides like DDT and chloradane
*Secondary and tertiary treatment of municipal sewage by aeration and chlorination
I worked in industry throughout this period and saw the change first hand. I also recall the days when smog from the steel mills in Birmingham, AL, USA and the industrial Midwest darkened the skies for sometimes over 100 miles away as I witnessed driving on heavy pollution days when I seemed to stay in the haze for hours. The improvement since those days is amazing.
My main criticism is that we throw away nutrients in sewage. If we do not recycle all phosphorous the world will be unable to support anything like the current population in less than 100 years.
How about the chemical cocktail of pharmaceuticals that we routinely discard into our water supply?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/science/earth/03water.html?_r=1
PBS's Frontline just did a program on
Poisoned Waters
Agreed that we made a lot of improvements but there are still many things left to be done. The top of the issue is our selfishness. We think we own nature (land, water, resource, etc...) but it shouldn't be so. Everyone should be a steward to the land that they live upon -- which should bring some attitude of responsibility -- not the exploitive ones that we currently have.
Thanks Dinh Ton,
I watched most of it and what struck me was how little we actually know.
What we do know is that to clean up this mess (if it can be cleaned up at all) will be extremely costly. Being that we are already in a global depression the necessary resources and the will and knowledge to smoothly transition from BAU to a new paradigm is probably be lacking.
I wish I could find reasons to be more optimistic but things are not looking good for humanity's future.
If its 20 years or so before that pod of Orcas in Puget Sound dies off, I figure that's about what we have before TSHTF for us as well.
Yes, the US has done a great job cleaning things up. The rest of the world is in some trouble however.
Here are a few links on how the Chinese may be close to economic peak once health and environmental negatives are taken into account. I think, long term, they will regret not having an environmental movement. They created the worlds goods, but received low wages and all the pollution for their trouble.
Pollution may cancel out China's Economic Growth (NPR)
Will China Choke on it's success?
Google for many more : china pollution health negative gdp
Tragedy of the commons. Very hard to solve.
...in the developed countries. Clearly pollution in developing countries has increased massively over this period likely wiping out gains made in the 70's.
Since we are using a lot of products made in the developing countries, indirectly we are responsible for a lot of pollution there. The way we have been consuming resources; we definitely are giving ourselves too much credit.
Pollution has been dramatically reduced since the environmental movement in the 1960-1970’s.
With some notable exceptions: ‘Toxic soup of pesticides’ killing West Coast salmon
That's not at all obvious. Consider what it means to have and spend a pension fund or savings. Or to go into the hospital. That's all paid for by ongoing industrial output, because that's all the money spent is, a claim on future production.
Look at the bills in your state legislature right now. We're at limits; all sorts of environmental restrictions are being waived as "too expensive". And as far as a model is concerned, increased pollution could easily cause industrial and population drop-off; a round or two of SimCity will make that point clear.
cfm in Gray, ME
Hmmm -- not so sure.
The thing is when you "retired" you become a tax on the working society. A certain part of the net energy gain has to be spent on sustaining that populace -- health care products and services are the most obvious. The cost of raising a child from 0-17 is about $100K in the US (if you take out the housing cost). The life expectancy of people managed reaching retirement age is about "age+15". If the government is giving out 12K/year for Social Security -- that alone is $180K -- not counting other retirement vehicles and medical liabilities. People might argue that they paid for it during their working years -- but looking at our current accounting of debt and obligations, there is a huge mismatch somewhere, both past and present.
Young people starting a family sure cost resource. However, creating a child becomes a drag on resource because of the world we built it -- not because of "creating a child". Once human learn to live within the mean provided by nature, human will be okie. The birth of a child will be similar to a birth of a whale or a bird -- no real net of cost of anything.
I would suggest you read Sharon Astyk's site. Great post about this thing. She has great thoughts on the subject.
iwylie wrote: "The demographic transition is well underway in all industrialized societies (that is the reason for the drop in the birthrate, even in India)."
Permit me to be provocative: "the demographic transition" is a myth, or at least the reasons cited for it.
Most often, people say women's increasing levels of education produce a drop in fecundity. But I have come to believe that it is increasing levels of energy consumption that cause the demographic transition, not women's education, literacy, or anything else non-energy related.
This begs the question: what happens if (when!) it is no longer possible to increase energy consumption in developing countries? I would submit that what will happen — and what shows up in the World3 output — is that the birth rate will go up when exosomatic energy availability goes down.
Think of it this way: it is not education that improves anyone's lives enough for them to not breed slave labour. Put a PhD a mile from clean water, and that PhD will either have to consume energy to access that water, or walk to the water and back herself, or have someone else do it for her. If she doesn't have the money (energy) to pay someone else to fetch water, the simplest way to get the water is to send your kids for it. And if you don't have kids, you can easily make them. Or if your kids are all busy growing food and doing other errands for you, you can add a water-fetching slave in a few short years, whether you have a PhD or if you can't even read.
Until this hundred-year energy spike, children have been the equivalent of a pension — someone to care for you when you are no longer able to care for yourself. What is going to make this any different as the energy spike dissipates?
Of course, perhaps, deus ex machina, some new source of energy will come along so that this person can get her water and her pension without breeding slaves. If Malthus could be blind-sided, perhaps I can be, as well. But the Precautionary Principle argues against betting the future of the entire human species (and the future of many thousands of other species, as well) on it.
"I have come to believe that it is increasing levels of energy consumption that cause the demographic transition, not women's education, literacy, or anything else non-energy related."
You might want to provide something quantitative that supports this idea.
The US uses much more energy, and yet has much higher fertility than Japan and Europe (about replacement). That doesn't support this idea. On the other hand, I believe there's a pretty good correlation between women's freedom and lower fertility. You might want to look at the literature.
"Of course, perhaps, deus ex machina, some new source of energy will come along "
It's already here: wind, solar, nuclear. High EROEI, reasonable cost, essentially unlimited resources (even nuclear).
Bytesmiths
"Most often, people say women's increasing levels of education produce a drop in fecundity. But I have come to believe that it is increasing levels of energy consumption that cause the demographic transition, not women's education, literacy, or anything else non-energy related."
I think it is probably simpler than this. It is just human nature to want what we haven't got. If your great opportunity to have some prosperity rather than poverty is to pursue education and have less children you will pursue this. If you live in a wealthy economy and are materially successful you may want to fight the emptiness by reconnecting with family and tribe through the joy of children.
We want to skip the old mistakes of our heritage which is a positive thing. I suppose what this means for an energy constrained future is limiting the number of our children to improve their chances of survival.
There is an article in today's San Jose Mercury News about how affluent communities in Silicon Valley are having more children. The cultural norm is becoming 3 instead of 2. I have noticed this myself and it was interesting to see it confirmed. There was absolutely no discussion on the impacts of this increase, either locally or globally. As a parent of two college age sons it is already clear that they have no chance of being able to live in the area they grew up in because the housing pressure is so great that it has priced houses out of the reach of all but wealthy immigrants or two-couple Google employees. The people having the large families some how don't seem to get the impacts of their actions.
Just possibly, they are unconsciously getting ready for the new reality. Families will be crowded three and four generations to a single house, many children mean labor for taking care of the older folks, a few children of the many born will survive, etc. We are getting ready for the return to the 17th century.
Just where does the Mercury News think all that affluence came from -- or even more questionable, how will it persist? People have their money in securities? Gasp!! In the banks? What a laugh!! In gold? Very tasty with sugar on it, I'm sure.
In my opinion, a wealthy man or woman in the future will own-- if such a thing is even possible -- a piece of land, and control of the labor of one's own immediate family and associates. Force at a distance, made possible by fossil fuel will be a distant memory.
TLTG had a major impact on how I viewed the future when I read it all those years ago. It was certainly one of the concepts that led me to try to establish a sustainable life style.
Interestingly, Matt Simmons had an interesting paper in 2000 entitled Revisiting The Limits to Growth:Could the Club of Rome Been Correct After All? It was available at http://greatchange.org/OV-simmons.club_of_rome_revisited.pdf
I didn't recheck the URL so I might have copied it down incorrectly when I printed out the paper.
TLTG coupled with the Hirsch report simply demonstrates the trouble we are in.
Todd
I notice that there is also an Australian study that relooks at this issue called A Comparison of the Limits of Growth with Thirty Years of Reality, by Graham Turner, published in June 2008. According to the abstract,
Bear in mind, there is also the offical "Limits to Growth: The 30 Year Update", published a couple of years back. The primary authors revisiting and - sadly - confirming their first observations.
you were correct Todd; the correct URL IS
http://www.greatchange.org/othervoices.html
http://www.greatchange.org/ov-simmons,club_of_rome_revisted.html
In reading the graph, I was initially skeptical about the resources curve, until I realized they meant remaining amounts instead of production rates.
Thanks for the information; it looks like a more in-depth study of this particular topic is warranted.
Re: "Remaining Amounts"
This is the theme of our upcoming update to our top five net oil exporters paper. In round numbers, in just three years it is likely that the top five net oil exporters have already shipped about one-fifth of their post-2005 cumulative net oil exports. The point is that these net oil export declines are front end loaded, with the bulk of cumulative net oil exports coming early in the decline, e.g., Indonesia shipped 44% of their post-1996 cumulative net oil exports in two years, with the remaining 56% being shipped in the following six years.
You might also look at net fertilizer imports at:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/FertilizerTrade/standard.htm
Fertilizer imports dropped last year, but the price doubled. The major input to fertilizer is natural gas.
decreased fertilizer = decreased food production = decreased human population. I don't see how you can see a clearer hydrocarbon mediated, limit to growth
Regarding decreased fertilizer use this year:
http://americanenergycrisis.blogspot.com/2009/04/this-should-get-your-at...
I live in Nebraska in the heart of farming country, and I can tell you that the huge increase in fertilizer prices last year, brought many farms to the brink of bankruptcy, they are all praying that the banks will continue to loan them money this year to plant there crops. Many are cutting back on fertilizer to cut costs, even though they know it will cut their yields.
I think the article is wrong, I think it has nothing to do with "psychology" and everything to do with decreasing exports driving the price of fertilizer up
Nitrogen imports in 2007 were 42% of our national requirement and in 2008 they were 48%. If I recall correctly the total volume used also went up. I use the U.S. Geological Survey data and it's quite detailed - listings of plants in operation, puts U.S. use in global context, etc.
I'd like to thank Dave for this, and confirm something.
While I was still in academia studying biodiversity and climate change I brought up limits to growth and was told a number of times that that thinking "was discredited." Since I had just read the material (both peak oil and the Meadows et al. book) and it corresponded very well to the reality I observed this knee-jerk response irked me greatly.
Seems only with the "unexpected" rise of prices and the growing awareness of the peak oil discussion has the conversation shifted to acknowledging that there might be some truth in LTG.
I only read the book a few years back. And had the exact same experience. Even people who were die hard peak oilers would tell me that LTG had predicted the world would end before 2000. What is especially amazing is that you only have to look at one of the scenarios to realize that the population drop was never projected to happen before 2000. So those people who dismissed it never even looked inside the book once.
I think the "disinformation campaign" was very successful. Or it just fit our cultures paradigm and so it was accepted and repeated. LTG went against our cultures dominant viewpoint and people dismissed it without cracking the cover.
I was talking to an economic friend of mine a few months back. If it's indicative of what's still being taught at university, the idea of unfettered growth is being still promoted. Of course, the answer is 1) technology will solve a lot of things 2) product replacement will solve the rest. Needless to say, it's hard to change minds.
I can only speak from my experience doing economics in Australia currently, but users here at the Oildrum may be shocked at what is being taught at my university.
In fact i believe a large humble pie may have to be shared round with all the economics bashing around here, id love to to do a guest post one day to at least demonstrate what is taught at my uni to give a different perspective.
Firstly and i can say from the 60 or so ive spoken to or listen to in tutorials that not a single student believes in unfetted growth or limitless resources. Secondly it is REPEATEDLY drilled into us that the market does NOT have all the solutions, ie. whole weeks taught on market failures, and externalities. People believe in technology to the extent that Apple will bring out a better Ipod but at least in my course, my prof has pointed out dangers of being optimistic about future technology to save the day when concerned about fundamental resources, such as energy, water and food supply.
We have covered peak oil, environmental economics, 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics, tax rates on petrol, carbon taxes, globalisation AND localisation, LTG, present value for project financing (with relation to financing large projects such as desal, wind farms and nuclear energy plants) and i swear in every single textbook on page 1 it says 'The need to make choices between the uses of SCARCE resources'. All of my eco friends 'Get it' and the challenges ahead.
Im very confused about the econ bashing sometimes, at least where i am studying, day to day talk is just like here at TOD about the state of the economy, oil, resources, debt and debt backing etc, and considering that the rest of the uni students are either:
1. Students from every other faculty (except environment students)that know close to nothing of these issues, care 20 times less, and believe that everything will be fine and be a millionaire at 35.
or2. Are environment students, socialists, or anarchists that come up with the most unrealistic ideas (whether you agree with them or not is irrelevant, 'close all coal power stations by 2010' etc. is not going to work, people need to explain to them the difference between possible and plausible)
So all in i may go to a cool uni compared to other economic courses, but i would much rather have some of these eco students and profs on my A team than say random people of the general public that think they know best.
btw, i know defending economics is a cardinal sin around here, im sorry i cracked :-)
No they don't --and they can't-- because the whole point of economic linguistics is turn realities into abstractions and thus walk away from the realities (to avoid "getting it").
Let's take the word, "externalities", for example.
But before I go there let me say this. Although I'm one of those who regularly bashes economics majors here, I do not believe that the study of economics is wholly without merit. Of course human beings have to put weighted valuations on goods and services (and also on bads and disservices --two words that I don't see in the economics literature and whose absence you have no good excuse for). And of course human beings have to make choices because time and resources are limited. But it's the "how" we put values on things that get us into deep trouble. It's the psychologies involved in evaluating that is the big bug a boo. If you economists are going to be of any service (rather than disservice) to mankind, you owe it to the world to study neuro-psychology along with the Laffer (sp?) curves. How many of your fellow students are doing that? Are you? Are you studying how markets cause consumers to make bad valuations and choose wrong courses of action or is this where you wash your hands with a cute linguistic trick like, "caveat emperor"?
Anyway, back to "externalities". It is with this one linguistic trick of pushing the concept "outside" your realm of studies that you become charlatans, because you choose to turn a blind eye to nontrivial aspects of human survivability and sustainability.
I can write volumes about economists "not getting it". But then we would have to walk you through the long hallways of those other "sciences", like chemistry, physics, thermodynamics, biology, etc. You know, that geek stuff. The stuff that you and your classmates are all too sure will show up like magic in your local shopping mall thanks to the magic of the market place. (Except that the delivery truck has no diesel and the truck driver is ill with swine flu --oops there goes another "externality")
But of course I kid you. I love economy majors.
No, that's just your misguided view of economics.
He's studying econ; he says it doesn't do that; you need to learn.
That would be one type of market failure.
Why do you keep attributing to him the opposite of what he's already said? Did you even read his post, or did you just launch straight into your pre-prepared anti-econ rant?
Pitt, ole boy, you're losing it today.
I didn't say him.
I said his friends.
Indeed it could not apply to him because he reads TOD.
It wasn't meant to be an ad hominem attack, but rather an attack on the academic institution known as the college campus economics department. If truth be told, they are a government sponsored religious cult. But of course we have separation of church and state which is why we do not refer to the monotheistic cult of the Invisible Hand as a religion (even though they worship an invisible and all knowing being, wink wink).
How, exactly, do you claim to know the beliefs of people you've never even met? What gives you the insight to contradict someone who actually does know these people?
(As an aside, you've misread. I didn't say you were saying anything about him or his friends; rather, I pointed out that what you were saying about economics directly contradicted what the economics student had just said.)
Given that your descriptions of economics and economists directly contradict the descriptions of someone with firsthand knowledge of both, I don't see how you expect anyone to take your "government sponsored religious cult" characterization seriously.
At the very least, you'd need to explain why this is the case, and to do so without directly contradicting peoples' firsthand accounts.
No I don't.
And besides, I just spoke to Invisible Hand and it told me I am excused from having to explain myself.
Your position proves it's a cult.
No debate allowed. No questioning of other people's beliefs.
If you believe what you say, why do you question mine?
Bravo.
Now you're finally correctly interpreting what I said.
It's a cult of linguistic manipulators who "externalize" everything that doesn't neatly fit into their dogmatic religion.
They may say they "get it". But one has to look far and wide to spot an economist who seems to get Peak Oil or Limits to "Growth" or the hard sciences like chemistry, biology, physics, etc.
You keep pretending people have said things that they never have.
I'm not insisting you agree; I'm insisting you back up your claims, and provide reasons why I should believe you when you say the econ student is wrong about econ. You're flatly refusing to provide any reasons, and just insisting that you're right and I should agree with you.
You're the one insisting on blind faith, not I, and I'm not interested.
My criticism of economists is that too few have any knowledge of engineering and physical sciences, upon which our modern economy is based.
It has been three generations since the first Great Depression and we still hear monetary theories as causes and solutions. We hear almost nothing about the supply side, such as Sklar on Disaccumulation as at the following link:
http://www.southerndomains.com/SouthernBanks/p5.htm
This view of the depression is that the productivity miracle caused the deflation of the 1930’s, which was just an intensification of the trend that had existed for decades and was particularly severe because of the labor savings from electrification of factories and households and the wide spread adoption of fertilizers, tractors, cars, trucks, telephones and other labor saving and productivity enhancing technologies. The price of electricity also was undergoing a dramatic fall as boilers, turbines and generators all became more efficient. (Ayres, Ayres and Warr: Exergy, Power and Work in the US Economy 1922-1998 http://www.iea.org/textbase/work/2004/eewp/Ayres-paper3.pdf )
The problem of today is that while we have all kinds of marvelous electronic gadgets, the cost of basic necessities is increasing due to higher real extraction cost of energy and ageing of the population.
Suggested reading for economists is a science timeline, such as http://www.sciencetimeline.net/. Anyone wanting to understand the economy needs to understand how we got the knowledge base we have today and how it is related to the supply side economy. I will caution that it may still be necessary to have an engineering background and to have worked in manufacturing to see how this influences the economy, but if I could leave you with just one illustration: 1711: A Newcomen steam engine replaces a team of 500 horses for pumping water from an English coal mine. Today we would use an electric pump that would have an overall efficiency (in terms of boiler fuel) of perhaps 20 times that of a Newcomen engine. Sixty years later James Watt performed experiments that paved the way for the science of thermodynamics, greatly improving the efficiency of the steam engine. The Industrial Revolution was born.
One more thought is Hans Christian Orsted's experiment in 1820 that showed that electricity and magnetism were related when he passed a current through a wire and it deflected a compass needle. Within a decade the electric motor and generator were invented, and in a few years we had the telegraph.
I read Limits To Growth in a seminar in college, probably 1988. The professor was even handed but much of the discussion by students was dismissive. I forget what other works we read. It was Reagan's Morning in America. I was affected by the book's arguments and found the criticisms more emotional than substantive. It was probably the start of 20 years of frustration and the beginning of my cynicism. Ever after I've been peeved when people dismiss environmental discussions with "That's so Malthusian." Unfortunately, this is so ingrained in economics, it will be an acceptable trump card long into collapse.
It's still Morning in America. Very few have woken up. The majority is still dismissive.
Here is what Sci America has to say in their May 09 issue about possible collapse of civilization (due to food shortages):
You would think that academics, specifically those who teach and do research in the sciences would have a clear understanding of the concept of limits to growth. Acctually I'm sure they do, however cognitive dissonance seems somehow to be hardwired into the way we navigate reality and apparently even rational scientists are not immune.
I'd like to cite a very interesting example from Nassim Taleb's book, The Black Swan, on how professional statisticians fall into the exact same traps as ordinary laymen, when they are confronted with making choices outside of their academic or professional environments. One would think they would easily avoid these cognitive traps based on their training. Research shows they are just as gullible.
Unfortunately I am in the process of spreading memes and have loaned out my copy of the book so I am unable to give an exact citation at present.
It's worth making clear the distinction between "limits to growth" as a concept and the book "Limits to Growth"; one can certainly consider the former to be crucial and the latter to be discredited. The book was only one examination of the concept, and it's by no means a stretch to say that the concept is so complex that the book made errors and came to faulty conclusions.
It is even less of a stretch, and more accurate, to say the opposite.
Cheers
One thing I'd like to point out about the birth rate model used in LTG is that there are controversies about it. The Fertility-Opportunity Hypothesis proposes that when populations go from poor to rich that birth rate declines, and that when they go from rich to poor birth rates decline even faster.
Why? Because the poor to rich demographic transition involves greater expectations of per capita resource allocation. These expectations persist for a while during the poverty descent and so create the conditions for delayed and fewer births.
Yes, isn't population crash, or depopulation a characteristic of civilization collapse rather than the upswing shown here?
What, this upswing?
Over a multigenerational timeframe, we've grown exactly like yeast in a vat. The slowing fertility rates don't tell me that we're learning to control anything at all. They tell me that the yeast has almost exhausted its ability to expand. As that occurs, population growth begins to flatten and then population itself will begin to fall.
I stopped commenting here on any regular basis because there is real work, important work, to be done by people who understand what is happening. I drop in here from time to time but I see the same hesitation to even discuss what has been thrust in your faces over and over again. And meanwhile there are those more concerned with persuading than acting. So be it. Have at your academic debates. The real data is sufficiently conclusive to warrant a response from a risk management perspective. That so many people refuse to respond tells me all I need to know about those people. For all your sakes I hope you are right and I am wrong. Just hope that I and others like me are not right.
If you hav'nt come across this before then it might be for you;
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/the_dieoff_QA/
LOL, i'm sure greyzone knows more about peak oil and jay hanson's work then a lot of people. Look at some of the older TOD posts, circa 2005-2007. His name pops up quite regularly and he's got his own blog. He's right though on the academic debate bit. We've pretty much run out of time. TOD needs to move to preparation for the crisis, there's no time left for fancy debates I reckon, we've all got to start preparing for the collapse.
Thus TOD: Campfire was born.
Going to break my rule on posting on DBs for this reason.
I see that Greyzone is one of those who 'Gets It'. He is right dead spot on. Lots of folks here still fence sitting and likely will be for a lot longer. Thats ok. Its needful but not for me. I am no oil expert. I am a dirt expert if expert at all and in anything. I deal with the dirt daily. I do pass along my concerns and what I learn to some that live here and I know but its truly a waste of time so I am weaning myself off that.
However I notice something of late on the number of posts occurring on Key Posts and on Campfires and DBs. Seems to have fallen somewhat. Yes its no longer winter but I am thinking that perhaps many here have like GreyZone 'Gotten It' and are spending their valuable time, doubly so since we are in the midst of planting season, spending that valuable time getting ready for the 'grand slam'.
"Poison Waters' on Frontline which I just watched really convinced me that we are on the way to absolute destruction of this planet.
Orcas will likely go extinct in 20 yrs that experts say. Unreal.
They now realize that the suburbs create tremendous pollution with stormwater runoff. Huge chicken and hog farms and ag contribute 40% to it. Hey round here they dump that chicken and hog litter right on the fields so it runs right off in the creeks!
Whoa....someone acknowledged that Tyson's Corner is a veriaible hellhole? I figured that out when I went to visit my son who was living right near Tyson's Corner and the 'Mixmaster'....yes a pity but its nice to see that the Congress Critters are drinking the Endocrine Disruptors in massive quantities. Wow.
So Campfire was born. That is where I do my posting. If there is to be any saving at all then it has to be with ACTION.
Talk is ..wellll...talk. Doing is doing and talking about doing is one way to really get on board with Doing. Talk it then do it.
So everyone thats missing and not posting too much anymore here may have gotten the message and are working on it feverishly.
Ones like Greyzone who used to post quite a bit and I seemed to miss. Lots of others gone as well or hopefully busy on those lifeboats, as they used to be known as.
Airdale--and exits stage right
Airdale, some of us are only just getting it!
What makes it tough to join you is firstly, decades of MS and shaking the habit; but most importantly, convincing loved ones to follow. So I stay and slowly chip away.
I'm in the final stages of play-testing my board-game invention, re-themed to reflect a bleakish future (a race for the last of the crude beneath the melting ice-caps, a few years from now). Some pics are here... http://www.boardgamegeek.com/images/user/151037
"Spreading the Word" - it's about the only possible (I have a meeting with a potential backer in a couple of weeks) contribution I'm capable of at the moment. Bit like changing the light-bulbs; at least it's something.
Regards, Matt B
And, BTW, I hope you're wrong as well! :)
Ahh once more...its not a DB...ok..too much hard labor and then a bit too much beer..(fixing my water purifier)..sowing seeds..never done,never done...
Yikes! I simply misread the graph. Yup, it's a real downer.
Try again.... The graph shows a sharp upturn in birthrates. I don't know if this is historically associated with collapse or not. I would guess birthrates would go down in a collapse or post-collapse.
Hi ET, my understanding is that higher birth rates come with more severe poverty. The mechanism seems to have a variety labels: like the "Selfish Gene" trying to insure it's continuation, or that those in poverty seeing offspring as the only "wealth" they have access to, or that parents in poverty see children as "old age security" like we all used to view 401K plans.
Look at how the birth rates curve relates to the three "per capita" curves. As whatever sort of created wealth per capita is increasing (meaning poverty is decreasing) then birth rates are decreasing. Then where the wealth per capita is decreasing (poverty is increasing) the birth rates are inceasing. Sad stuff...
Hi Greg. I just don't see it. I'm not up on the data, but I would doubt one could find a country or countries in recent history who have experienced a drop in wealth and a corresponding rise in birthrates and fertility. I don't think the relationships between wealth and fertility is nearly as simplistic as this graph implies.
If your hypothesis - that lack of resources is causing the observed fall in fertility rates - is correct, then we should see lowest fertility rates in areas of lowest per capita resource availability. However, we see the exact opposite of what your hypothesis predicts; fertility is lowest in the areas of highest resource availability (the rich world) and highest in the areas of lowest resource availability (least-developed nations).
Accordingly, evidence suggests that your hypothesis is incorrect.
The LTG model actually has population declining, but from rising death rates exceeding rising birth rates.
If the Fertility-Opportunity hypothesis is valid we'd see rising death rates and falling birth rates.
It's worth noting that there is evidence to support this hypothesis. In particular, Russian birth rates fell sharply after the breakup of the Soviet Union, and have taken 25 years of economic recovery and pro-population-growth policies to recover.
Had Russia found itself in a situation where economic recovery was not forthcoming, it seems likely that low birth rates would have continued and population decrease would have accelerated. You can see here in Russian population pyramids that the number of children decreased sharply between 1990 and 2005. Had birth rates stayed at their low level, Russian population appeared headed for a 40% per generation decrease.
Similarly, the birth rate in Zimbabwe has decreased slightly since its meltdown started in 2000.
Accordingly, available evidence suggests that modern societies which suffer a significant decline is economic and social welfare are not likely to see an increase in birth rates, at least in the short term.
Put "energy" in front of "poor" and "rich," then imagine how that hypothesis plays out in a declining energy future.
Analogy: doctor informs you that you have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and are overweight. You will likely die of a heart attack if you do not change your ways. Noting that you have yet to have a heart attack and that you feel fine and very much enjoy your present lifestyle, you ignore the doctor's advice and instead gain more weight, eat a worse diet, and exercise less. You return to the doctor decades later, 800 lbs, barely able to walk or sleep, but proud that you have proved the doctor wrong: you are not dead yet! The doctor looks at you and begins filling out your death certificate. We are all walking dead.
Donella Meadows, lead author of the original Club of Rome book, co-authored a 30-year update and re-appraisal a year or two ago.
They came to the same conclusion, but tried to temper their initial 1972 message with a little bubbly hopefulness, that we really, really can change.
I think I remember some discussion of the book on TOD when it first came out.
She passed away in 2001, and the book came out in 2004 (IIRC, this was mentioned in the foreward). The other 2 co-authors are still living however..
Concomitant with TLTG, ecology seemed to shift from an analysis of abundance to one of diversity. Fed up with the old metrics and biomass, our attention went to Shannon-Weaver diversity indices and newer mathematical analysis. The preoccupation with diversity and the resulting exclusion of abundance over the last several decades is misguided at best in my mind. Gone also are even the simplest life histories for organisms other than those of immediate economic value.
That is a good point. We lose a lot by just looking at diversity--both the overall quantity, and the types of creatures not included in the diversity indices. The quantity is hugely important, as the wold's population keeps growing.
If we are looking at a diversity index, it seems like all of our domesticated cows, pigs, and chickens should be considered in the calculation.
The species diversity of cultivated plants and livestock is decreasing at a rapid rate too. For plants, something like 5% a year. For livestock a little less, but the diversity of livestock is already quite low.
We have become so ingrained to look at biological communities or ecosystems from the diversity angle. But what insight has it provided?--our understanding seems little advanced. Diversity was supposed to give us a better understanding of systems that abundance couldn't, yet it is the issue of abundance that precipitated it all. We could see that the herds of mammals were a thing of the past, immense flocks of birds gone, even the obliteration of streetlamps by insects gone. We measured. Quantified. Unit weights of species for a given area would catalog the degradation of landscapes.
But biomass ran aground, arguments that simple abundance was insufficient, that high biomass occurred in degraded zones, that Sphaerotilus and other "pollution tolerant"- as they came to be coined-told us little of the health of a system. That we couldn't include the shell of sessile mollusks in tabulation, but that didn't apply for skeletons of fleet organisms. We needed to quantify the health of a system, seemingly so we might degrade it more.
Species diversity gave us that down and dirty number. Look for the 4's. No worries. It can slip to a three. Diversity demonstrated that the high biomass in polluted areas were in fact degraded. We ignored the liabilities of the indice. That computed values only represented a segment of a study area's flora or fauna. Who was the expert who could identify all the grasses, moss, shrubs, or all the invertebrates and vertebrates in the samples? So we look at the diversity of say only the insects, but found even as we slice, few knew the early instars in a molt series, that the mesh of our nets determined the sample. This analysis could get real expensive, in a hurry.
I recall the many cautions stated with introduction of the index. That it was insufficient to stand alone, that it should be presented by trained biologists, and then only as supplementary information. There were mutterings that such talk was only turf wars, job security, yet now diversity is found in any tabloid.
The index was touted for providing a look at the webs of life, the interconnectedness, the resiliency of a system. It does, but by its very computation, high numbers of one species skews the value to its low end. The best values are produced by many species with low to moderate numbers. The central question of abundance is obscured.
It always returns to abundance. Maybe by concentrating more on this end, we might have better understood the Club of Rome's warning. It seems so elementary, that resources are finite, there are limits to growth. Perhaps had we more study of abundance, some of the many questions flying through my mind tonite might be better answered.
Hello TODers,
Recall that Norman Borlaug statement: "Without I-NPK-->Game Over!
Will we ramp everywhere local O-NPK recycling in the near term with sufficient speed and volumetric flowrate to adequately offset depleting FFS used to mine, beneficiate, and globally transport I-NPK to the final topsoil square foot?
Will we wisely use the last remaining 'cheap FFs' to build Strategic Reserves of I-NPK to help bridge the transition to mostly O-NPK usage? Or will we continue BAU & JIT until we suddenly find ourselves airborne doing the 'Wiley Coyote' on the bad side of the Net Energy Cliff?
107 [P]hosphorus kg per American requires an astounding energy input to get, for example, Morocco overburden removed, then the raw ore extracted, then wet-flow processed, then beneficiated with sulfur towards making high potency DAP, then transported to far-inland, and/or high elevation farmland in the Rockies, Sierra Nevada, etc.
Let's not forget that the UN FAO fertilizer forecast is already projecting that North America is headed into a phosphate deficit, and AFAIK, they have NOT accounted for Peak Everything in their analysis.
Have you hugged your bag of NPK today?
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
The other night I was reading some 140 year old colonial Spanish geology reports on the fossil nitrate deposits in the Atacama desert and I thought of you. Did you know that region also has some phosphate accumulations in addition to the sodium nitrate found there?
Seems like rail lines into the interior, solar energy collection to drive desalination as well as transport, etc, would be a good thing.
And POT has already done some investing in the region ... but my links are too messed for me to bring that one up easily, so I leave this to teh Google to report upon ...
"Will we ramp everywhere local O-NPK recycling in the near term with sufficient speed and volumetric flowrate to adequately offset depleting FFS used to mine, beneficiate, and globally transport I-NPK to the final topsoil square foot?"
Ahhh you do realize that Organic inputs would be nowhere near enough don't you? Not enough to even begin to consider.And of what type and where? Humanure? Nope. Bird droppings? Hey the bats are dead and dying.
All the big confinement feeding does it create runoffs with lifekilling effects(when used on fields as inputs. See the Frontline on Poisoned Waters.
Here the Anhydrous tanks are rolling and injecting. Some try liquid Nitrogen. Its planting time in the 'heartland'(read wastelands)...
Every farmer is betting on a crop and the market.
Its time to play.."You Bet Your Country"...once more.
Let the games begin.
Airdale
PS. I am using Steve Solomon's COF this spring for the first time. Got soybean meal at $12/50 lb bag and know where a huge pile of dolomite powdered lime is. Kelp is a tough one so I leave it out. I do add a bit of bone meal. No I-N,P,K..or at least not the usual 10,10,10 stuff. Otherwise I am encouraging Hairy Vetch...but just in case brought a 5 lb bag of seed and lots of Buckwheat seed. For cover crops.
I have not been convinced by any of the posts making strong links between the financial ‘meltdown’ or ‘crisis’ and the price or availability of fossil fuels.
In times of trouble, if one looks for relationships, one finds them, even if they look kinda murky.
First, no rising price of a commodity, any commodity, can account for the massive trillions of dollars of fraudulent deals/debts (to make it short) - and their effect, which is ongoing today, and will continue, while oil prices have sunk and are having zero impact on halting the cratering. The sums in dollars are not on the same scale...
From a EU perspective, one might have invoked the rise in price of fresh veggies after the heat wave of 03 - they doubled, tripled, and never came down...of course one could argue that oil prices played a role in that...or that veggies are not vital, one can skip them, etc. Yet, nobody is pontificating about the price of fruit and veggies in the family budget as candidates for an explanatory sliver in Iceland’s collapse, or the present problems of Ukraine, Belarus, Greece, etc. - it sounds completely absurd, and is so.
Americans are obsessed with the price of gas, as they count on it, and use so much of it. Peak oilers will relate anything to ...Oil! I’m often guilty of that bias, but not this time.
If there is any relationship, it is very indirect, and relates to the limits to growth invoked above. It is possible that an awareness of limits in natural resources (which includes soil, water, uranium, etc.) and the disorganization of the present ‘globalization’ rules prodded some factions into re-writing accounts in an abstract way, hopefully making man’s script triumph over nature, and creating ersatz exchanges (bubbles, shuffling paper debt, credit default swaps, etc. for temp. gains on paper) in a hope to overcome barriers...Or, more accurately to make a last bit of hay while the going was good. If I am right, the relationship can never be attested to, except as discourse from ‘experts’ - aka opinion.
The ‘financial’ crisis was, is, an outcome of de-regulation, fraud, greed and a melding of corporations, the finance community, with the State (reliance on debt without real world growth) and the very temporary hike of oil price was a minor result of it. When it became clear that the house of cards would fall, huge amounts of money were invested, very suddenly, in commodities, as representing a ‘sure bet’ until that also proved to be illusory...
Others have suggested that. Seems as much of a stretch beyond chalking it all up to greed and sloth as crediting energy with all our financial mishaps, though. Greenspan may be as naive as his statements about regulation suggest; or so enthralled with himself that he was convinced that proclaiming the banks would regulate themselves would be enough. Bear in mind what a real rock star of macroeconomics this guy was. I don't see him plotting this nefarious scenario 20 years in advance of peak oil to let his banker buddies cash in.
Labelling Alan Greenspan as misguided or naive seems like a stretch also. Just like others on a very long list, he created a very big mess while profiting immensely personally (the present day American dream).
As I finished reading Thomas Friedman's "Hot, Flat and Crowded", I thought "Wow, this book is just really a re-hash of 'Limits to Growth'". Did anyone else have that same thought?
Something in the chart is either misplaced or just doesn't make sense. It shows the birth rate being higher than predicted (35 predicted with 45 actual), the death rate being lower than predicted(11 predicted with 8.5 actual) but the population being lower than predicted. I suspect the birth rate figures are transposed.
I don't have an answer, but it seems like the rates could be changing over time. The population is a cumulative number (in some sense) so reflects the effects over a long period.
The "actual" birth rate is grossly inflated. It's given as 45 (per thousand people), but in reality it's 20.
In fact, almost nowhere in the world has a birth rate that high. Just 5 countries have a birth rate of 45 or more, as compared to 28 countries with birth rates under 10.
It's a staggering error, so much so that it makes one wonder about the quality of the rest of the information in the article.
That's a bit much, don't you think? Why don't you ask for clarification before accusing someone of incompetence, if not outright lying. As a teacher, I am used to figuring out where errors come from. When one bit is on and another related bit is way off, it's almost always a simple mistake, such as compution, transposition, its.
Given the death rate is about right and the birth rate is about right for 40 years ago, I'd say it's a data error, not malfeasance.
Cheers
Perhaps CCPO you should not attempt to treat grownups as children being taught.
This is not a school. Its a discussion. Your not accredited for such.
BTW if I am reading this site that you post on then YES I am your audience(as you pointed out to Jokuhl the other day that he was NOT) but I most certainly am NOT your student.
You need to pare it back a bit. Quit being so *()*&* overbearing.
Take a pill or something before logging in. Please.
And he did NOT accuse. He said it makes one WONDER.
If your really a teacher then surely you can PARSE a sentence for cripes sake!!!!!!
What heavenly chariot did you descend from? Give of your ideas and opinions and quit hazing everyone. Debate and question but get off that very high equine.
And turn in your 'hall monitor' badge as you exit.
Everytime I read your rants I once more question whether the wheat is worth the chaff. We all let go a rant ocassionally. Yours seems to be daily.
Airdale-I am loggging off,,enough BS for one day already
Pitt:
A'parsing we shall go: Staggering here would indicate a huge and unbelievable error. As in, nearly impossible. To make such an error one would have to be really poor at what they do.
To then wonder at the quality means Pitt might expect other errors, and not just a comma out of place. Other serious errors that make the post unreliable, nee, useless. The words used by Pitt are very, very strong. There is no mistaking his view of the work.
I thought calling the entire paper into question a bit silly, frankly. I read the paper. There was nothing wrong with it except that one number. Does such deserve, to paraphrase you, Pitt's rant? I think not.
So, I did some research. As I have already said, the death rate number was correct, but the birth rate number was not. It *does* match birth rates from certain nations currently, many nations previously, and - I could not determine this - possibly past global rates.
Now, it is staggeringly unlikely the author is an idiot, but data input and editing errors in any written work are staggeringly common. Occam's razor applies.
Thus, it is far more likely to be a simple typo or editing error than to be a ...grossly inflated... staggering error.
Besides, Pitt tends to be a bit irrascible. It's completely in character for him to post like that, which informs my perception of the post. In any case, I thought he was being unfair.
Cheers
That's not what "staggering" means:
adj.
Causing great astonishment, amazement, or dismay
It says nothing about the probability of the error, or about the competence of the one making the error. That's just something you've made up and keep pretending I said; I didn't.
Basically, this all boils down to "read more carefully".
Why don't you stop putting words in my mouth?
I have not accused the authors of anything other than getting this one number wrong. It could be any number of things, including a simple and innocent misreading. What I have done, though, is noted that if a major error shows up with the first number I check, it raises serious questions about the trustworthiness of the other numbers.
Maybe there are no other errors, but this error was so large and so central to the article - and so in favour of the authors' conclusion - that it raises concerns about their objectivity that they would not notice and correct it.
What I suspect happened was that the number was read from the wrong place (perhaps birth rate per thousand women), and that the error was not noticed because it made perfect sense in context of the story the authors wanted to tell. That's an honest error, and it's a fairly understandable error - we don't look as critically at things that make sense to us - but it's a severe enough error due to author bias that there's significant concern about the objectivity of the rest of the article. If their bias was strong enough to let the wrong numbers in, what was its effect on the more-subjective conclusions?
So I'm not saying the authors lied or are incompetent; all I'm saying is (a) the correct number seriously undermines their argument, and (b) the magnitude of the error seriously undermines the authority of the rest of their numbers.
It's about the article, not the authors.
I pit no words in your mouth, I interpreted what you wrote.
No, it doesn't. Much liek flipping a coin, one error, unless you know how and why it was committed, tells you absolutely nothing about the probability of any others. The proof lies in the pudding: the article is short. It would have taken you all of a couple minutes to determine if there were any other errors. Instead, you engaged in...a rant.
We shall have to agree to disagree about your intent.
Cheers
Reporting results in a scientific article is NOTHING like flipping a coin.
One piece of data can be like flipping a coin (i.e., has noise), but it would be utterly incompetent to flip a coin once and say "this coin always lands heads".
The correct way - and the way scientific numbers are typically reported - is to flip the coin many times, statistically analyze how it landed those times, and report a probabilistic conclusion, such as "53% +/- 4.2% heads".
There are a number of reasons why one might erroneously report "100% heads". One reason is an honest error - perhaps a trick coin with two heads was accidentally grabbed. Another reason is incompetent data gathering, such as only flipping the coin once. By saying reporting a number is "like flipping a coin", you're essentially accusing the authors of gross incompetence, and it is not fair to make a judgement like that with the evidence we have available.
By contrast, consider if you're reading out a string of numbers for someone to write down - 4, 7, 9, 3, 6 - and you ask them to read the numbers back to you. If the first number they read back is "1", then you're not going to have a lot of confidence that they recorded the rest of the numbers correctly. And that, essentially, is what happened with the article - the first number I checked was wrong, which suggests a fair chance some other numbers might be wrong as well.
***
More importantly, though, this is utterly irrelevant to the real issue, which is that the number is wrong, meaning the current state of the world is significantly better than the World3 run, meaning the main point of the article is somewhat called into question.
Compared to that, why the error was made is a non-issue.
A useful example for discussion of the Demographic Transition is the UK; see details in Julie Jefferies http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_compendia/fom2005/01_FOPM_P...
The large reduction in birth rate occurred from around 1870 and lagged the very large decreases in the death rate from 1850.
Famine and plague were not issues in the significant reduction in population growth rate. UK currently has birthrate of 10.65 per 1000, with gradually increasing population (steady, or gradually changing population numbers equates to 'stage four', see quote and link).
EROI Guy,
It seems to me that Scenario 9 still has the best fit to the real world. If we include CO2 with the pollution peaking in 2040. Its difficult to make the case that available resources have declined even 10%, and certainly not 40% as indicated in Scenario 1. What are these resources that have declined? Energy?
Dennis Meadows gets some props: AFP: Japan honours 'Limits to Growth' science author
I find the comments about nutrient availability to be interesting and troubling. While NPK are not used up they do end up in places where retrieval is not practical. I would like to learn more about phosphate limitation. Are we running out of phosphate mines? Can we reclaim phosphate from aqueous sediments at an affordable cost? I don't worry much about nitrogen as it can be split from water with high temperature at an efficiency of 50%. High temperature generation IV reactors can replace natural gas as a way to get hydrogen. I recall reading that 1% of the world's total energy budget is given getting ammonia nitrogen. The main reason the Paul Ehrlich was wrong on his prediction of a population crash was that he did not foresee the advances in agriculture, including expanded use of fertilizer. We desperately need to sustain agricultural productivity to maintain the human population level.
Why should we want to "maintain the human population level?" And what makes you think "we" will have anything to say about it?
The US Geological Survey lists reserves and resources for all major minerals as in the phosphate example:
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/phosphate_rock/
The US supply is probably around or past peak, with about 40 years remaining with imports at the current level. There are less than 100 years world wide supply of reserves with a couple hundred years of undeveloped resources, which are more than likely lower quality and more difficult to mine.
Nitrogen can be fixed using legumes; however, you cannot obtain the high yields possible by using large amounts of supplemental nitrogen. Also, growing legumes sometimes displaces another crop.
Nitrogen is typically around 2%, phosphate 3/4% and potassium 3/4 to 1% of the total weight of the harvested portion of foods. Typical blended fertilizers contain between 40% and 50% N+P+K, meaning that it takes pound of agricultural grade fertilizer to grow 10-15 pounds of a harvested crop (or 30 or more pounds of a nitrogen fixing crop like beans or peas). The point is that the quantities of fertilizer are significant, and most soils will rapidly diminish their crop yield unless nutrients are replaced.
I see no way that broadacre cropping can be replaced with small scale organic. It is a great sight to drive past huge wheat farms during harvest time. The uncut wheat shimmers like brushed yellow velvet in the breeze. I think it was one of the scenes played in the dying room in the movie Soylent Green. Yet it is totally dependent on diesel powered machinery and imported nutrients. Now add increased risk of erratic rainfall. Millions of overfed people waddling around in their fat bellies have no concept it could all end.
EROI Guy,
The 1972 study; "We plot one generalized resource that represents the combined reserves of all nonrenewable resources, although we know that each separate resource will follow the general dynamic pattern at its own specific level and rate."
From the plot you have presented, I measure that the limits to growth projection for resources in 2009 have declined to 60% of the 1900 value.
Here is a list of some major resources and present consumption rates:
coal 6,000 M tonnes(20% consumed )
oil 3,200 M tonnes(40-50% consumed)
natural gas 1,500M tonnes(<20% consumed)* reserves larger than 1970
cement 1,900M tonnes(<1% consumed) no limits on clay and limestone
iron ore 1,600 M tonnes(<10% consumed)* reserves larger than 1970
alumina 45 M tonnes(<1% consumed) * reserves larger than 1970
copper 15M tonnes(<30%consumed) (resources 1600M tonnes)
nickel 1M tonnes? (<1% consumed)* reserves X10 larger than 1970.
uranium 70,000 tonnes(<5%consumed) *reserves 5M tonnes (larger than in 1970), resources much larger
Oil(180exajoules/year) is the only resource close to 40% depletion by 2009, but since 1970 the world has found about 50% of the oil consumed in that 40 year period. Non-FF energy resources have increased by 50 exajoules/year in last 40 years to 65exajoules/year.
maize yields in Iowa have doubled since 1970(90bu/acre to 180 bu/acre).
Clearly predictions of resource limitations have been wrong so far. All other predictions were based on declining resource availability.
Comments?
"Clearly predictions of resource limitations have been wrong so far"
The predictions were never intended to be date-specific but to give a broad picture of how resource restraints would force an end to growth within a 100 year time-frame.
Not sure where you get your figures for FF's but my analysis, from combing TOD and other sources, suggests that oil will be 60% depleted in 10 years, nat gas 50% depleted and coal 40% depleted. And remember, the easy stuff goes first so your arguments for uranium and various minerals may work based on total amounts in the ground but not if you look at the ease of recovering that stuff, especially with dwindling energy sources to enact the recovery.
Pan out from year-on-year detail and the curves still look pretty accurate in my opinion.
TW
thewatcher,
The "limits to growth, scenario 1" projection was assuming that resources in aggregate would be declining rapidly by 2010, evidence suggests that (scenario 1) is wrong for almost all resources except oil ( as I noted, if we are at peak).
I used the figure 40-50% of oil depleted, guessing we are at or close to peak. We will only know when we are past peak oil. I was reading off graph for 2010( not 2020).
For natural gas US geological survey gives 15,400TCf ( resources) and EIA 6,254 proven reserves. In 1980, proven reserves were 2,580Tcf. The world has used 2,600 Tcf. In 1990 proven reserves were 3,991TCf, so you can see that the resources figure is probably about right, certainly more than proven reserves. Using the proven reserves we have used 25% of NG, using resources we have used 15%. I split the difference(20%), but note reserves are still increasing unlike oil, so ultimate NG resources could be more than 17,000Tcf.
Hall and Day give "fish" as an example of a resource, if this is to represent food availability, it's very misleading, food production has increased over the last 40 years, mainly DUE TO BETTER plant varieties bred by CYMMIT and IRRI( the green revolutions). This can be demonstrated by growing old varieties with the same nutrients.
Furthermore <5% of US energy is used to grow and transport food, most is for processing and cooking, not a priority in a starving population collapse scenario. Less than 1% of oil is used for growing food, 5% of natural gas for nitrogen fertilizer. In any case all scenario's had food and industrial output increasing beyond 2010.
A more optimistic "scenario 2" shows resources lasting another 20 years, while scenario 9 has food production NOT declining and resources declining much slower. Until 2010, everything else is the same, so the only way to see what scenario we are following is to look at resources NOW, not what we think we will have in 2050 or 2100.
Neil1947
"Until 2010, everything else is the same, so the only way to see what scenario we are following is to look at resources NOW, not what we think we will have in 2050 or 2100."
Surely more meaningful to look at the shape of the curve rather than taking a snapshot of resource levels today? From many posts on TOD, and analyses elsewhere, it's not unreasonable to guesstimate an overall FF peak around 2020 given our present trajectory. If the mid-point of resource depletion turns out to be 2020 rather than 2010 then I still maintain the original prediction is pretty accurate in the context in which it was made.
Regarding fish stocks and general food production, I would not view these as primary resources. Rather, it is the factors that are required for their growth that you need to look at - FF's, topsoil, water, nutrients (e.g. phosphorus) etc. Many of these factors are severely strained even though overall food production is holding up. The problem is that depletion of the resource factors will not neccessarily be mirrored by a reduction in foodstuffs. Rather, there could be a tipping point when the many interdependent factors combine to cause collapse. A similar argument can be made for a collapse in industrial output. And maybe analogous to what we have seen recently with the financial crisis!
Of course all these systems are very complex and we won't really know if collapse is on the cards until it has started. By then of course it will be too late to do anything about it.
TW
The New Scientist had an article on resource constraints. It is pretty shocking. And it assumes no growth, when we know these things tend to move in curves up and down.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19426051.200-earths-natural-wealth...
JonFreise,
Many of those applications of vital elements were not invented in 1972, only copper and zinc appear to be essential. Both of these metals have very wide use but most applications can be replaced by other metals, or other processes( corrosion protection, batteries). Africa has very large amounts of copper, we can now extract ores one tenth as rich as in 1972, using low energy methods(acid leech) not widely used in 1972.
The so called rare earths are not rare, just difficult to purify, similarly for lithium( not mentioned in article) and certainly not considered in 1972.
thewatcher,
The claim was: According to Hall and Day, "The values predicted by the limits-to-growth model and actual data for 2008 are very close."
The predictions for population growth, economic growth, food production have no surprises now or in 1972 for at least until 2010. The big difference was the claim that we would have used up 47% of our resources! Scenario 1 fails this test and this is the only test we can apply now.
When are we likely to use up 60% of our resources, 2020, 2100?? the model says 90% will be used by 2050! Do you think that's credible?
In particular, it's not clear how the authors derived the figure of 50% depletion since 1970 for copper.
There appears to have been about 350M tons of copper mined since 1970, as compared to current (economic) reserve base of 490M tons. Even if (a) no more copper is discovered, and (b) none of the 450M tons of not-currently-economic reserves are ever mined, that's still 490/(350+490) = 58% remaining, not 50%. If the recoverable reserve base is used instead, that's 950/(350+950) = 73% remaining (relative to 1970).
The only way I can get near 50% is to take total all-time production (~500M tons) vs. only the currently-economic reserves (490M tons), but that is (a) not "values vs. 1970 levels" as the caption said, and (b) too dependent on the current prices to be a reasonable estimate of remaining resources.
Resource depletion is a serious problem, making it especially important that numbers associated with it be calculated objectively and openly.
Neil
"The big difference was the claim that we would have used up 47% of our resources! Scenario 1 fails this test and this is the only test we can apply now."
Does it though, or does it depend upon which resources you look at and then consider not just how much is left but their ease of extraction compared to 1972? Net energy arguments should be applied to all spheres of human activity, not just extraction of energy itself. And as with FF's the easy minerals and other resources are tapped first leaving the more disperse and difficult to extract stuff for later. You make a valid point about improved technology making extraction easier for some minerals but for many it is more energy intensive now than 35-40 years ago. And there is always the possibility in some cases that better technology may lead to sharper depletion rates in the future just as EOR can (depending on its nature and how vigorously it is applied) for oil.
What level of resources corresponds to 50% depletion if you consider net return? 40%, 30%, less? It would be interesting to see such an analysis performed beyond just energy sources.
90% depletion by 2050? Yes, I can quite easily believe that figure if I consider what form of FF, mineral and other resources will remain, and the amount of energy that will be required to extract them.
TW
TheWatcher,
"Does it though, or does it depend upon which resources you look at and then consider not just how much is left but their ease of extraction compared to 1972?"
This is what the authors of "Limits to growth" said about resources:
"We plot one generalized resource that represents the combined reserves of all nonrenewable resources, although we
know that each separate resource will follow the general dynamic pattern at its own specific level and rate"
The problem is that virtually all reserves have increased since 1972. I don't have the reserves for 1972, but reserves of oil in 1980 were 644Billion barrels, in 2009 1342 Billion; natural gas in 1980 reserves were 2,580 Tcf, in 2009 is 6234Tcf. We now know that the world has used close to half of the total oil resource, but in 1972 this resource base was less than we now know actually existed at that time. It is only now after we have back-dated fields that is appears that these reserves were identified before 1972.
In the case of iron ore, copper and alumina, very big discoveries were made after 1972, and reserves of known deposits greatly expanded.
Thus it is not possible to know how much of these resources have been consumed except we can be certain a lot less than appeared possible in 1972, and definitely much less than 47% with the possible exception of oil.
For energy the other big factor is the expansion of non-FF energy, nuclear, hydro and wind energy grew by 400% from 16exaloules in 1972 to 65 exajoules in 2009, still less than FF but if we are projecting to 2100, we should include these as permanent energy additions(90years x65exajoules). This was not considered in the "Limits to growth" model and has contributed to the slower decline in energy availability as well as the larger finds of oil and gas.
Neil
But again you're looking at depletion in terms of the actual amounts of resources rather than effective amounts. Taking that standpoint for minerals you could argue there is no depletion at all, only a dispersion. But there is a very real depletion in terms of our ability and energy requirement to process those minerals. Otherwise it's a bit like looking at heat instead of temperature and concluding plenty of energy is available even when there is no gradient to work with.
wrt FF's you can apply the same logic. If 2020-2030 marks the 50% depletion of actuakl physical reserves, 2010 may well mark the point of 50% depletion of reserves from a net energy pov. What will the eroei be for the last 10 or 20% of coal we extract?
To be fair I've not read LTG yet (it's on order) so it may be that you are correct to claim a specific point regarding their definition of resources, and current depletion levels according to that definition, is invalid. However, put it throught the filter of net energy and I bet we're not far off 50% about now.
wrt non-FF energy, hydro is close to capacity, nuclear is another non-renewable with declining eroei and wind is still only a pimple on the backside of an elephant. And the elephant is still growing faster than the pimple!
TW
thewatcher,
I would agree that energy is critical and that some ores are now much lower grade than 40 years ago, others such as iron ore and alumina are still very high grade and close to surface. Oil is definitely going to be running out within 40 years, coal is being consumed at 7Billion tonnes/year( resources 660-980Billion)so even if EROEI increases, we are still going to have >50% of present resources. For coal, CO2 pollution is likely to be more of a limitation. For NG, until the growth in reserves starts to plateau( as it has for oil) its difficult to know if resources of 15,000Tcf are reliable, if they are we will use 25% of this by 2050.
You are not doing justice to non FF energy especially from the 1972 point of view, since this date hydro has expanded AND IS STILL expanding at 15GW capacity per year(just not much in US) but could be expanded
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5216#more
More significant is the 400% growth in non-FF energy, enough to completely replace the energy in today's oil consumption(180exajoules/year)in 20 years if growth in nuclear wind and solar energy continues at present rates.
If you want to make the case that growth in non-FF to replace oil cannot occur because of a limitations( locations, uranium supply, industrial capacity etc) then that's the argument you should use.
If you are claiming that we will physically run out of an essential resource or it will become so expensive that the economy will not be able to use it(ie production will drop by >90%), and there is no substitute, you need to list these resources? iron ore, alumina, copper, nickel, zinc, lithium, niobium,???
I don't think the world economy will collapse if we can no longer manufacture mobile phones weighting less than 100g because of a shortage of an exotic mineral that wasn't used 40 years ago.
I'd suggest another possibility - that commodity food production has increased at least to a large extent due to the elimination of many varieties and to the tuning of a production system to only a very few varieties. The system is increasingly rigid and brittle. That oil is such a small percentage only suggests how highly leveraged that small percentage of oil is. That food production has increased over the past 40 years while the trophic balance of fish in the sea has so changed - I don't see that as suggesting anything sustainable.
At a grafting workshop yesterday I grafted maybe 20 apple trees onto root stock. The root stock for the apples all Antanovka. The rootstock for the pears and plums all prunus americanus. How is this different from the grapes in Europe i asked? It's not - and the Europeans still hate us for what we did; it's a serious systemic weakness the two workshop leaders pointed out. So a huge number of our food systems have serious achilles heels. We increase production but it seems always at the expense of diversity and resiliency. That's not a good tradeoff at the limit.
cfm in Gray, ME, off to plant 20 trees.
While we are extracting larger quantities of most minerals, the quality of the resources continues to go lower. We have to dig deeper (miles in the case of gold and platinum group metals in S. Africa) and obtain lower concentration ores, as is well documented in academic literature and in mining company annual reports. I have seen estimates of the energy requirements for extracting resources increasing by 1% to 1-1/2% per year, although for some minerals this increase would apply to a decade or more. The replacement cost of oil and gas show a much more dramatic rise due to the depth of the drill bore, horizontal drilling of shale gas, deep water and heavier oil. The quality of oil is also declining, meaning that it is more difficult to refine and yields a mix of lower value products.
We are mining many resources that would not have been considered reserves in the 1970’s, the most obvious being tar sands. Also, deep and high altitude mining is challenging, the deep mines having temperatures too high for humans to work without HVAC and the high altitude mines lacking oxygen.
Paul,
If the economy depended upon the amount of gold mined you would have a good point, major minerals such as iron and aluminium are on the surface and resources are vast, measured in >100 years supply AND proven reserves increasing.
If the only energy resource was oil you would also have a good point. If the only energy was FF's and we had no nuclear power or any renewable energy resources we would have a problem.
If agriculture used most of our energy, and yields were declining we would be facing mass starvation.
If lead and mercury (and CO2) levels continue to rise exponentially.
None of those conditions apply to the world in 2009(possible exception of CO2), but in 1972 it looked as though yields may not increase, many metals such as nickel and copper seemed to be depleting, other metals such as tungsten and tin are not used as much as technologies change, natural gas reserves were small, nuclear had just started and was like wind power in 2009, wind and solar energy were not proven, lead, mercury, pesticides were increasing.
Scenario 1, fails the test, we are not at 53% of 1900 resources, but scenario 2 (80%resources) and scenario 9 where we use less resources are still credible.
Neil:
Iron and aluminum are among the most common elements in the earth’s crust.
The USA once had some of the richest copper deposits in existence, in Michigan, which early in the 20th Century was a leading producer. Youngquist in Geodestinies tells of copper nuggets weighing many tons. Today in the US we mine deposits of 0.5%.
Some minerals that are in danger of becoming exhausted, in no particular order, are:
*Tin (bronze alloys, solder, electroplating) High price caused substitution.
*Silver (electronics, catalysts, solder, bactericide, superconductors, ultra-high efficiency motors and generators) Once huge stockpiles existed, but recently in supply deficit.
*Mercury (instruments, switches, dentistry) Would be in short supply if it hadn't been phased out becaues of toxicidity. It famously caused deaths of some people who ate seafood downstream from chloro-alkali plants using mercury cells around 1970.
*Tellurium (photovoltaics, alloys, ceramics) Resource limit to Te photocells.
*Gallium (semiconductors esp. light emitting diodes, photovoltaics, light emitting diodes)Supply limiting to GaAs photovoltaics.
*Cadmium (batteries, electroplating, photovoltaics)
*Molybdenum (high strength steel, stainless steels) In short supply before financial crisis.
*Indium (liquid crystal displays, semiconductors, LDE’s, alloys with gallium that melt at room temperature, solders, superconductors)
*Platinum group metals (catalysts) In deficit before financial crisis.
*Lithium (batteries, welding flux) Resources limit lithium ion auto batteries.
*Zinc (brass, castings,alloys, galvanizing) Zinc used for galvanizing is typically consumed and unavailable for recycling.
There are many other elements that should be on this list. A good source of information on scarce elements is: http://www.resourceinvestor.com/
In addition to metals some renewable resources such as fisheries and forests are in danger. If you have any good sources for old growth mahogany, cypress, redwood or teak, please pass them along.
Returns from timberlands have exceeded those of the stock market since the mid 20th Century.
Paul,
The point is that the major resources used by our economy are abundant. Sure the US has used it's high quality ores, and in 1972, the extent of almost pure hematite ores in Australia and Brazil was not realized. Copper ores(<0.2%copper) can now be extracted by low energy acid leeching so can use low grade Nickel laterite ores(<1%). Lots of deposits in Australia and Africa ready to re-open when the price of copper goes above $2 a lb. Lester Brown is reported to claim that the world has as little as 25 years supply of copper. The US geological survey gives reserves of 480 M tonnes and reserve base of 950M tonnes(in 2002) before the price spike uncovered lots of additional potential reserves. Higher prices allow reserves to be increased. Deep sea nodules have 700M tonnes of Cu, and other minerals. Most copper is recycled.
Zinc is also abundant, surface deposits up to 20%zinc, and can be recovered from electric arc dust( 30% Zn) when re-cycling zinc coated sheet metal scrap. (see www.Intec.com.au). Low prices are preventing wide spread Zn metal recovery. Old lead ore tailings often have high concentrations of Zn(18%).
Platinum and silver are used for jewelry and as a store in value because they are rare, like gold they have industrial applications but these are not the major use. Silver was used in extensively in photography(replaced by new technology).
Tin was used on roofs, then in canned goods, but technology has displaced this major use.
Lithium is abundant in the earths crust(2x10^-5) but most ores are not very concentrated, but only a few kg's required per vehicle, definitely not going to limit all 600 Million vehicles being converted to electric/battery. Similarly for Cobalt, Nickel, Niobium, used in batteries and electric motors.
Perhaps some of the more exotic minerals will be too expensive to use for most applications, but do you seriously think society will collapse, we will have mass starvation because we are short of Gallium? That's what you are implying if these are the vital resources that we are going to have used 90% by 2050.
Now if you could make the case that we have used up 50% of our copper or iron ore or other essential mineral reserves in 2009 and will run out by 2050, that would be more serious for our present economy. That's what the Limits to Growth "scenario 1" is predicting.
Since the industrial revolution prices fell in work hours for almost all commodities, at least until recently in developed nations. In the last few decades this trend reversed for many commodities, recently becoming rather dramatic with the emergence of China, India and other Asian nations. China's growth rate is such that economic output is doubling each decade.
If everyone in China consumed resources at the rate as in the USA, many would either peak or be depleted before 2050.
Paul,
I would agree if China suddenly started consuming resources at rate of US, AND no additional exploration was carried out and no new miners were opened. We can see form the increase in demand from 2004-2008, a lot of new mines opened in Australia( now some of these are on care and maintenance). For example Nickel went from $10,000/tonne to $50,000/tonne, but then laterite heap leech was started. This is low energy extraction but uses sulphuric acid and the price of this input went up. Now the Nickel price ( and sulphuric acid price) has declined and laterite extraction is on hold for now.
The issue with energy is different, no new oil is going to be discovered, but China can expand nuclear, wind and solar, energy availability will prevent growth so rapid that we will run out of any major mineral resources causing a collapse of the world economy.
What was not available in 1972 was good non-FF alternative energy(nuclear was just beginning).
Your post is full of nonsense. Examples:
1. The Pilbara Banded Iron Formations (Western Australia) were well known in the 1970s. The Tom Price mine (now Rio) opened in 1966. And as for "almost pure hematite"; no - most BIF is actually high in phosphorous (~1%; Tom Price is not), which makes steelmaking difficult and expensive (i.e. energy intensive).
2. Current heap leaching of copper is largely restricted to (not all that abundant) oxide ores and some crude dump leach operations. Biologically mediated leaching of (much more common) sulfide ores has been studied, but is not an established technology. And why you would think that "low energy" is far from clear. All that ore still has to be blasted, loaded, carted, crushed, ground, aggregated, stacked, leached and rehabbed. And the lower the grade, the more ore has to be extracted per tonne of copper. Yes, 0.2% copper is currently mineable (I'm working on such a project right now), but at huge energy cost. The biggest single operating cost at most base metals mines in diesel.
3. Heap leaching of low grade nickel ore currently happens at a handful of mines around the world. It turns out to be much more difficult than leaching gold or copper, mainly due to ore permeability issues. Most existing low grade nickel operations instead use the HPAL process, which is anything but low energy (it dissolves the ore in sulfuric acid at high temperature and pressure, inside huge titanium pressure vessels).
4. When was tin last used for roofing? The colloquial "tin roof" is actually galvanised steel.
G.
Gergyl,
This is what I said about iron ore:
"Sure the US has used it's high quality ores, and in 1972, the extent of almost pure hematite ores in Australia and Brazil was not realized."
Australia's first exports of iron ore were 13,000 tonnes in 1964, by 1970 that had increased to 40Million tonnes(from the Pilbara), and in 2008 was 280Million tonnes. The other big deposit is Carajas in Brazil, first shipment 35Million tonnes in 1986, Brazil now exports 300Million tonnes.
Both deposits about 95% iron oxide, 5% other contaminants, China is mining ores 40% iron oxide, so I would say these ores are almost pure iron oxide.
The nickel laterite heap leech is low energy, surface ore(1% Ni) is just piled onto leech pads and dilute acid sprinkled over surface for 180 days. A lot less intensive than acid pressure leach(HPAL); this is new technology only used in a few new mines so far, so what.Some of the newest HPAL mines have closed, heap leech still operating in Australia, will probably drive HPAL out of busness.
The Limits to growth talks about resource use since 1900, the major use of tin was for roofing in 1900, later tin was used to plate tin canned goods, now major use is in electrical solder. The expressions "tin roof" and "tin cans' are derived from the use of tin metal. In 1948 tin was considered one of the major strategic metals, when Malaya was the major producer.
The Escondida mine, Chile( the largest copper deposit in the world) with 3.9Billion tonnes reserves, produces 127,000 tonnes copper by acid heap leach of oxide and has just commissioned a 180,000 tonne bacterial assisted sulphide heap leach.
Australia has abundant low grade(<1%) copper oxide ores close to the surface, that until acid leach technology were not economic to extract.
http://www.mining-technology.com/projects/escondida/
what was the nonsense?
I looked at my graphs on the report to the club of Rome, but I did not see any birth rate curve. The nearest I got was the fucundity rate which went from about 6 babies per womb in the early 1900 to a low about now which rises again to about 4 Babies per womb at the end of 2100.
So where did the curve come from?
What are the strongest arguments against the pesimistic view?
What about the Singularity, where computing power goes asymptotic.
Will the two asymptotes (Population versus computer power)cancel or will it mean that carbon based lifeforms will go the way of the valve. Or something else?
What about genetic engineering. Recreate humans by design. One falls pregnant as an act of volition.
Biodiversity might be about to explode. Then we will see if evolution or design produce better results. "A tree is known by the fruit that it yields".
Are there any other weaknesses in the armour of the Doomer?
Arthur,
One could just as easily turn your question on its head and ask," Are there any other weaknesses in the armor of the cornucopian?
The response to questions such as, " What about the Singularity, where computing power goes asymptotic"
should be to roll one's eyes and just walk away...but I can't resist a little snark.
Oh, yeah, our silicon life form based overlords, will benevolently watch over the remaining carbon based life forms after they have wiped the face of the planet clean of us pesky humans. That and the fundamentalist Xtians who believe in the rapture will be somewhat surprised to meet their new god, the giant quartz crystal.
This kind of thinking is the strongest argument *FOR* the pessimistic view!
Believe me, I am pessimistic. Does anyone know where to buy Potassium iodide (KI) tablets, for nuclear fallout mitigation?
I am trying to see if there is a viable counter argument before I invest in the Tablets.
Arthur,
The iodine were issued in Ireland for free in 2002, but they have a shelf life and were never replaced. The minister responsible lost his job due to a perceived lack of preparedness.
Reverting slightly to the original topic, gapminder sllows some interesting presentation of data, in particular the change of life-expectancy + fertility rates by country http://www.gapminder.org/
The puzzling thing about this article is that it doesn't prove it's case.
First, the Limits to Growth predictions, as presented by the article, aren't very good. The birth and death projections are off quite badly (as Pitt notes, the "actual birth rate" presented in the article is dramatically incorrect). The population and industrial output per capita projections aren't any better than mainstream projections. The pollution projection cherrypicks worst offenders (CO2 and nitrogen), and yet even so misses quite badly (a projection of 3x 1972 levels, vs 2.0 and 2.1, respectively). The resource projection has to cherrypick light-sweet-oil and copper to look good (and there are some sharp objections earlier in the comments to the copper depletion assessment, to which I'd add that copper has very good substitutes for most of it's uses, and recycles very well). The only major resources that seem to fit the 50% depletion prediction are soil and fish, and calculations or sources aren't provided.
2nd, it hangs its resource case almost entirely on peak oil, and quickly dismisses wind and solar because they're not yet large energy sources. Yet, wind is cost-effective, has high EROEI, and an enormous resource base.
Both wind and solar are growing much faster than fossil fuels (roughly doubling every 2-3 years), and yet they say "the annual increase in the use of most fossil fuels is generally much greater than the total production (let alone increase) in electricity from wind turbines and photovoltaics." This is highly misleading. As an analogy, one could say that in the early 1980's that "the annual increase in the use of land line phones is generally much greater than the total production (let alone increase) in cell phones." Wind was about 1/3 of new generation in the US in 2008. It could easily provide all new generation in 5 years, and then start replacing coal.
Clearly, the overall fossil fuel resource base has declined much less than the 50% used in this article. More importantly, if one includes wind and solar resources, there is no significant decline at all - the whole question of energy "resources" becomes unimportant. Instead, we're looking at questions of investment and transition, which are entirely different.
The case isn't proven by any means, and people will adapt and survive as always.
The point is: a crude Malthusian analysis from 30 years ago got uncomfortably close to the present situation by simply assuming business as usual without predicting any specific events. That alone is enough to say that we need to be taking the current situation more seriously than most people seem inclined to, because if we stay on those trendlines the next decade will not be pretty.
" crude Malthusian analysis from 30 years ago got uncomfortably close to the present situation "
But, my point was that it didn't: it's predictions weren't especially good.
Yes, we hit "peak lite", where the growth of oil demand was higher than the growth in production. On the other hand, our current economic problems weren't caused by a resource limitation, but by trade problems. If existing oil had been located in consuming countries, this current credit crunch wouldn't have happened: the world economy continued to grow even as oil production plateaued, but ultimately the world financial system wasn't sufficiently well regulated to properly handle the trade deficits caused by high oil prices.
The premise of Limits to Growth is that we are facing fundamental, long-term resource-based limits to growth. The premise of this article is that so far, it's predictions have held up. Unfortunately, the article doesn't prove either case.
Oddly, the article hangs it's hat on Peak Oil, and the premise that oil cannot be replaced. For people who present themselves as innovators thinking outside the conventional box, this is very odd. It's as if we were listening to the CEO of Exxon-Mobil about the centrality of oil in our society, or to the CEO of Duke Energy on 60 Minutes, talking about the impossibility of replacing coal. We need approaches that are a little more forward thinking than that.
I do agree that we need to urgently address peak oil and climate change. I just think it's important to clarify that, in the long term, we are not limited in our choices by resources. We're going to have to choose our future, not rely on geology to make our decisions for us.
In an infinite world you would be correct, but we do not live in an infinite world.
In the long term is exactly when we will be most constrained by resources. How we deal with those constraints will tell a lot about humanity.
"In an infinite world you would be correct, but we do not live in an infinite world."
Not really. All we need is enough. No one is suggesting that resource consumption will grow forever, including the most conventional of economists. That's what you might call a "straw man" - an argument which no one is making (it was more plausible 30 years ago, when some of these ideas were originated, but it's very clear now that population growth and per capita resource consumption will level off - heck, most OECD countries are much more worried about population decline!).
Let me illustrate: right now the US uses about 450 gigawatts of electricity, on average, or .45 terawatts, or .45TW. It's overall energy consumption is the equivalent of about 2.5 - 3 times that, or roughly 1.2TW (taking the roughly 3x greater value of electricity into account). The world uses about 4 times as much as the US, or roughly 5TW. If the whole world were to use energy at the same rate as the US, it might use 20 times as much, or 25TW.
Now, there's at least 72TW of easily usable wind power available around the world. There's about 100,000TW of solar energy, of which at least 1,000TW is easily available. There's also quite a bit available from nuclear and other sources.
When the easily available energy is so much larger than any possible level of consumption, how can that be considered a limit??
Nick,
You are spot on as far as energy, but I think people are also thinking about mineral resources. From my memory of the time the book came out, very few were thinking about oil supply( this was before the Sept72 oil embargo). Most of the discussions were about exhausting high grade deposits of iron ore, copper, tin, zinc. Most of the "reserves" were less than 50years supply.
In a stable world population with very high rates of recycling, the world would not need an infinite supply of minerals. We can estimate that in total probably X10 to X100 today's yearly production would be required if the world used minerals at the US rate of consumption(not actually consuming).
In time technology will reduce this actual requirement especially for minerals that are harder(more expensive) to recover.
Most minerals are fundamentally different to petroleum in that deposits extend all the way down to magma, and EROEI doesn't come in to limit what can be extracted providing we have a large renewable energy supply. Most importantly most minerals are not consumed( except uranium).
I agree - the Limits to Growth model doesn't seem to take recycling into account.
So. The LTG model doesn't include
1) recycling;
2) substitution (e.g., replacing copper with aluminum & fiber optics);
3) renewable energy; and
4) leveling off of growth (including the demographic transition and market maturation).
What else?
The short form is: they did consider all that, just not all in this model because this was the business as usual model.
This was only one of several models considered in the book, with all sorts of parameters tweaked between the models. They didn't approach the depth of analysis in the presentation of the models that people manage here as regards oil depletion, but this was a one-off book with a limited page count and a broad view. Here we have as much material dedicated to particular oil fields as there was room for in a 1970 print edition intended for popular consumption.
"The short form is: they did consider all that"
Could you give me the long form? In other words, could you find me some evidence for that?
For instance, we see here ( http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/5145 ) that the model does not include an explicit analysis of energy, let alone differentiate between fossil fuels and renewable energy. This previous article is a report of an attempt to add energy as a component. It says the following: "in a world with unlimited energy, any chemical compounds useful as a raw material but not as an energy source could be easily obtained ".
Frankly, I don't understand what all the fuss was about 40 years ago. The model was clearly a very simple first approximation. It assumed that resources were limited and could only be used in a very simple, inflexible way - it shouldn't be surprising that it found that we had very serious resource depletion problems: that was built right into the assumptions.
Nick,
The "Limits to Growth' did make a major contribution to the "ecology" movement that later became the green movement.
One of the reasons was because it used a "computer' program, this was fairly new, I was doing a Fortran programing course at the time using punch cards, that were run once a day. No one had PC's. Computer simulations were new.
Pollution and food availability was considered the big threats, and you will see that this is what caused some scenario's to collapse even when more resources are assumed. They were thinking of mercury, lead, arsenic SO2 from power stations,etc just like China today. Long before fluorocarbons and CO2 were issues.
I think part of the recycling of paper and glass movements comes from the "limits to growth " thinking.
In one scenario they have "food production doubling" no one thought this would be possible by 2050, but here we are with yields of many crops X2 that they were in 1970, and only half way to 2050.
hmmm. Yes, there were some plausible threats beside "hard" resource limits.
Yes, I was using tape (!) and punch cards then, too. If a computer said it, it had authority. Reminds me of Asimov's "The Last Question".
Quite right on that point.
We can "choose" to go extinct or at least to die-off.
It is astounding to me that people even debate the inevitability of limits to growth. The fundamental physical laws of conservation of mass and energy dictate that nothing (of substance) can grow forever or keep being consumed at steady levels forever.
Sure. You can play semantic games and insist that "decline" can go on almost forever. But in terms of having more and more people on this planet while having less farming land and less energy production, that equation can't last forever.
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We've seen the Wiley Coyote enemy; and he is us.
"It is astounding to me that people even debate the inevitability of limits to growth. The fundamental physical laws of conservation of mass and energy dictate that nothing (of substance) can grow forever or keep being consumed at steady levels forever."
Uhmmm, didn't we just have this conversation?
Again, all we need is enough. No one is suggesting that resource consumption will grow forever, including the most conventional of economists. That's what you might call a "straw man" - an argument which no one is making (it was more plausible 30 years ago, when some of these ideas were originated, but it's very clear now that population growth and per capita resource consumption will level off - heck, most OECD countries are much more worried about population decline!).
"You can play semantic games and insist that "decline" can go on almost forever."
I see no evidence here for decline.
"having less farming land"
Well, given that we use the majority of farmland for non-primary food production (cattle feed, coffee, coca, etc), I'm puzzled how we could really hit a basic limit.
"less energy production"
Again, let me illustrate: right now the US uses about 450 gigawatts of electricity, on average, or .45 terawatts, or .45TW. It's overall energy consumption is the equivalent of about 2.5 - 3 times that, or roughly 1.2TW (taking the roughly 3x greater value of electricity into account). The world uses about 4 times as much as the US, or roughly 5TW. If the whole world were to use energy at the same rate as the US, it might use 20 times as much, or 25TW.
Now, there's at least 72TW of easily usable wind power available around the world. There's about 100,000TW of solar energy, of which at least 1,000TW is easily available. There's also quite a bit available from nuclear and other sources.
When the easily available energy is so much larger than any possible level of consumption, how can that be considered a limit??