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I'm but you can be completely right about having been wrong in the past, but growth is an exponential phenomenon in a world with a fixed amount of resources. Y

I'm but you can be completely right about having been wrong in the past, but growth is an exponential phenomenon in a world with a fixed amount of resources. You're just saying "it's worked before, it should work again" as an argument. This is complete garbage.

kebman 5y ago
Then please allow the late Hans Rosling to put you at ease :) https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_global_population_growth_box_by_box?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_global_population_gro...
- Zigurd 5y ago
  Rosling is right if his population numbers are right. 10% higher and things go very badly.
B-Con 5y ago
"There's a consistent track record of being wrong, we should learn from it" is not garbage, it's the bare minimum for engaging with the topic intellectually and honestly.
- Daishiman 5y ago
  In that case, we have destroyed about 50% of the earth's natural biomass and we are near the point of depletion of the earth fish stock. That means that an order-of-magnitude increase in consumption, which would trivially happen is all of the earth's existing population were to have first-world consumption standards, would completely wipe away a sustainable society. As far as I know, order-of-magnitude reductions in consumption of basic resources while keeping living standards is not something we are anywhere remotely close to achieving.
s1artibartfast 5y ago
But population growth rate isn't fixed and currently going down. Half of the the world's countries are below the replacement fertility rate, and would be in exponential population decay if it wasn't for increasing life expectancy. China is a great example of this if you want to look into their demographic information
chaos_emergent 5y ago
You mention fixed resources as if we're getting close to the limits of those resources. The premise here is that we are currently capable of fully exploiting the resources of the earth, which is provably false. A good example of this is the technology cycle of the oil industry. In the 20th century, the primary extraction method for oil was tapping shallow, high pressure oil reservoirs. Oil riggers would drill down less than 1000 feet and oil would come gushing out. As the shallow pockets ran out, the oil industry lamented because they approached a perceived resource constraint. Shortly thereafter, it was found that there was an order of magnitude more proven oil reserves deeper down. I think society is at a similar nexus today. We're at an inflection point between the end of a lot of steep growth curves (oil and gas production, population growth, [possibly] economic development in the West) and the beginning of a lot of new ones (replacing oil with sustainable energy sources, material science, bioengineering, nanotechnology, space exploration). In all of those realms, it's painfully clear that we're a far ways away from the extent of available resources. Let's consider artificial energy consumption by humans today. In total, humanity consumed ~500 PWh in 2019 [1]. Power flux of the earth is 173 PW; annualized, earth's energy flux is ~15 million PWh. That means that we consume 0.003% of the energy that is incident the earth. Clearly we're not getting close to the fixed resources of the earth. In this view, global warming and resource consumption are still existential concerns, but we are working against perceived limits rather than today's physical limits. Humans are really good at making technology that increases the exploitable resources at our disposal. I'm relatively confident that we'll build technology to save us from extinction, but perhaps not from societal collapse. [1] I summed the consumption from 2019 in the spreadsheet available here: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy?country=USA~GBR~CHN~OWID_WRL~IND~BRA~ZAF&Total+or+Breakdown=Total&Energy+or+Electricity=Primary+energy&Metric=Annual+consumption https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy?country=USA~GBR~...
- Daishiman 5y ago
  Oil extraction and the extraction of rare metals mined for solar panels are still limited by the basic laws of thermodynamics. In that context, oil extraction is become ever more inefficient and there is nothing we can do about it. And in the context of resource extraction, it comes at the cost of a reduction in biomass and biodiversity. It is a laughable claim that we are anywhere remotely close to working towards, let alone reverse, the damage we've done to the biosphere.
astrange 5y ago
Economic growth doesn't consume an exponential amount of resources, it works by increasing productivity, which uses fewer resources. Human population is definitely not growing exponentially either.
- aylmao 5y ago
  > Economic growth doesn't consume an exponential amount of resources Right now it does. GDP growth and resource use have been demonstrated to be pretty tightly coupled, so if economic growth is exponential so is resource use, afaik. It's worth noting that energy is also a resource; it is really hard to de-couple productivity from energy usage. Check out this article, and Figure 1 specifically: https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/growth-without-economic-growth/growth-without-economic-growth https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/growth-without-econom...
  - astrange 5y ago
    US per capita energy use and total water use peaked around 1980: https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1407626765799878660 https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1407626765799878660 Total non-renewable energy use seems set to peak soon. Even ignoring tech improvements, economic growth comes from services, which means trading imaginary things between each other.
    - aylmao 5y ago
      The USA has also exported large amounts of its industry to other countries, hence it's important to look at global figures.

kebman 5y ago

Then please allow the late Hans Rosling to put you at ease :) https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_global_population_growth_box_by_box?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_global_population_gro...

Zigurd 5y ago
Rosling is right if his population numbers are right. 10% higher and things go very badly.

B-Con 5y ago

"There's a consistent track record of being wrong, we should learn from it" is not garbage, it's the bare minimum for engaging with the topic intellectually and honestly.

Daishiman 5y ago
In that case, we have destroyed about 50% of the earth's natural biomass and we are near the point of depletion of the earth fish stock. That means that an order-of-magnitude increase in consumption, which would trivially happen is all of the earth's existing population were to have first-world consumption standards, would completely wipe away a sustainable society. As far as I know, order-of-magnitude reductions in consumption of basic resources while keeping living standards is not something we are anywhere remotely close to achieving.

s1artibartfast 5y ago

But population growth rate isn't fixed and currently going down. Half of the the world's countries are below the replacement fertility rate, and would be in exponential population decay if it wasn't for increasing life expectancy. China is a great example of this if you want to look into their demographic information

chaos_emergent 5y ago

You mention fixed resources as if we're getting close to the limits of those resources. The premise here is that we are currently capable of fully exploiting the resources of the earth, which is provably false. A good example of this is the technology cycle of the oil industry. In the 20th century, the primary extraction method for oil was tapping shallow, high pressure oil reservoirs. Oil riggers would drill down less than 1000 feet and oil would come gushing out. As the shallow pockets ran out, the oil industry lamented because they approached a perceived resource constraint. Shortly thereafter, it was found that there was an order of magnitude more proven oil reserves deeper down. I think society is at a similar nexus today. We're at an inflection point between the end of a lot of steep growth curves (oil and gas production, population growth, [possibly] economic development in the West) and the beginning of a lot of new ones (replacing oil with sustainable energy sources, material science, bioengineering, nanotechnology, space exploration). In all of those realms, it's painfully clear that we're a far ways away from the extent of available resources. Let's consider artificial energy consumption by humans today. In total, humanity consumed ~500 PWh in 2019 [1]. Power flux of the earth is 173 PW; annualized, earth's energy flux is ~15 million PWh. That means that we consume 0.003% of the energy that is incident the earth. Clearly we're not getting close to the fixed resources of the earth. In this view, global warming and resource consumption are still existential concerns, but we are working against perceived limits rather than today's physical limits. Humans are really good at making technology that increases the exploitable resources at our disposal. I'm relatively confident that we'll build technology to save us from extinction, but perhaps not from societal collapse. [1] I summed the consumption from 2019 in the spreadsheet available here: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy?country=USA~GBR~CHN~OWID_WRL~IND~BRA~ZAF&Total+or+Breakdown=Total&Energy+or+Electricity=Primary+energy&Metric=Annual+consumption https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy?country=USA~GBR~...

Daishiman 5y ago
Oil extraction and the extraction of rare metals mined for solar panels are still limited by the basic laws of thermodynamics. In that context, oil extraction is become ever more inefficient and there is nothing we can do about it. And in the context of resource extraction, it comes at the cost of a reduction in biomass and biodiversity. It is a laughable claim that we are anywhere remotely close to working towards, let alone reverse, the damage we've done to the biosphere.

astrange 5y ago

Economic growth doesn't consume an exponential amount of resources, it works by increasing productivity, which uses fewer resources. Human population is definitely not growing exponentially either.

aylmao 5y ago
> Economic growth doesn't consume an exponential amount of resources Right now it does. GDP growth and resource use have been demonstrated to be pretty tightly coupled, so if economic growth is exponential so is resource use, afaik. It's worth noting that energy is also a resource; it is really hard to de-couple productivity from energy usage. Check out this article, and Figure 1 specifically: https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/growth-without-economic-growth/growth-without-economic-growth https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/growth-without-econom...
- astrange 5y ago
  US per capita energy use and total water use peaked around 1980: https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1407626765799878660 https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1407626765799878660 Total non-renewable energy use seems set to peak soon. Even ignoring tech improvements, economic growth comes from services, which means trading imaginary things between each other.
  - aylmao 5y ago
    The USA has also exported large amounts of its industry to other countries, hence it's important to look at global figures.