The article says that the various predictions are equally good fits because they don't diverge much by 2020. If in 1972 researchers came up with multiple models

The article says that the various predictions are equally good fits because they don't diverge much by 2020. If in 1972 researchers came up with multiple models that all predicted pretty much the same thing over fifty years, but then wildly diverge over the subsequent fifty years, that alone is problematic. Limits to Growth predicted we'd run out of oil by 1995, 2005, or at their most optimistic, 2022. Not peak oil -- out of oil. Similarly we were supposed to be out of gold by 2001 at the latest. Food and services are both supposed to be peaking right now -- 2020 -- and going into rapid decline. There was little reason to give credence to LtG even by the '80s, but by now it should be viewed with extreme skepticism. Scanning through the book, this line jumped out at me: "If on average 5% of the population dies each year..." then the average lifespan is 20 years and humanity is doomed. That's their point, but I don't think that's how they intended to make it. That's just careless. They also happily extrapolated exponential curves for population, per capita gdp, etc.