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These kinds of analyses are just pure BS. I remember reading (and believing) them in 2005, about how oil was going to become unaffordably scarce by 2020. Right

These kinds of analyses are just pure BS. I remember reading (and believing) them in 2005, about how oil was going to become unaffordably scarce by 2020. Right before the fracking revolution happened. If you look at earlier estimates, we were supposed to have 20 billion people on Earth now. > also seems to be peaking right about now indicating that despite continuous growth in the global population, we are experiencing declining global food production. The per-capita caloric supply is growing: https://ourworldindata.org/food-supply https://ourworldindata.org/food-supply

baq 1y ago
The analysis assumes resources are finite and exponential growth is impossible, then makes educated guesses at how some quantities interact. Are you arguing that the model didn’t predict fracking correctly or what’s your point exactly?
- cyberax 1y ago
  Well, _eventually_ the growth might stop. But the growth doesn't automatically mean that it happens because of the resource use increase. Growth often results in technologies that use _less_ resources: cars and lighting are prime examples. > Are you arguing that the model didn’t predict fracking correctly or what’s your point exactly? I'm arguing that predicting the exact point where the growth limits are reached is impossible. Especially when it's not due to something fundamental like the Sun's total energy output multiplied by the lowest possible entropy increase quantum.
- eru 1y ago
  We are sitting on a giant pile of matter, and we get a steady stream of fresh energy from the sun everyday. Yes, resources are technically finite, but we are a long way away from that mattering. Until then, there's a limit on how cheap we can get our resources---and human ingenuity is chipping away on that. But scarcely a limit on the absolute amount of resources. > Are you arguing that the model didn’t predict fracking correctly or what’s your point exactly? The model didn't predict anything correctly. Fracking is just something on top of people's minds now, but the model didn't take the green revolution into account, when that was already underway when they formulated it.
- thereisnospork 1y ago
  > These kinds of analyses are just pure BS At risk of speaking for the parent, I think that sentence sums it up. Specious is the fancier word for it. These 'analyses' take a myopic view of a complex buffered system and well beyond the predictive power of the analysis. Kind of like saying $MSFT went up 1pct today, so by this time next year it will be up 365% and in a decade its exponential growth will collapse the economy. For a recent non-contrived example, projections of electric vehicle ownership haven't exactly followed expectations.
- csomar 1y ago
  Resources are potentially infinite and that's ignoring that we are consuming a non-perceptible amount in the visible universe. We are a long way from consuming anything.
  - piva00 1y ago
    They're only potentially infinite if we figure out ways to expend an ever-increasing exponential amount of energy to capture them. Energy is cost, there's absolutely no way to know if we will figure a way to produce the energy required to extract resources from outside our planet, even less to know if we won't expend the most easily accessible resources before we can start digging for more outside of Earth. We should be treating our accessible resources as finite, and improve the efficiency of using them, just to make sure we can keep enough until all the breakthroughs we need to explore resources outside of Earth exist. It's like the propaganda from the oil industry, talking about how plastics are so damn important for modern life and we couldn't live without the oil industry. It's absolutely true, but it also gives a very clear argument on why we shouldn't be wasting fossil resources to be burnt for energy if we can find other ways to access energy, we should be keeping as much as possible of this finite resource (which very likely doesn't even exist in any close proximity to Earth) for its more useful material products like plastics.
yieldcrv 1y ago
> about how oil was going to become unaffordably scarce by 2020. right before the fracking revolution happened. and before that the same thing happened. you can find books in the library from the 70's saying the same thing about oil by the year 2000 all that's happened is that commodity economics kick in. the scarcity of oil prompts people to pay more for the oil. the higher price of oil makes investors realize they can write larger checks to people aiming to explore for oil in harder to reach places with expensive machinery, to make enough to pay back the investors. which is why deep sea expeditions took off, which is why fracking took off the trend is likely to continue this is what occurs in some other commodity markets as well
- adastra22 1y ago
  That book from the 70's was Limits to Growth.
  - yieldcrv 1y ago
    it was a kids picture book about a very often repeated peak oil idea
    - adastra22 1y ago
      Which is all downstream of Limits. That's where it started.
csomar 1y ago
There can be various ways to approach this: - We are collapsing but it is not the dramatic collapse everyone is expecting it to be. If population "slowly" declines consistently, eventually, there will be too few people. If you have a 2 million year graph, this era will look like a sharp spike for a very short time. - We are adapting but fracking prevented that from happening in the West and other places. Because China didn't have that luxury, they had to push through solar energy. This provides hope that the exponential growth will continue as energy is abundant around us. So there you have it. I can see arguments to each side of the coin and am not sure which way it'll play.
_Algernon_ 1y ago
Looking at all of human history, these kinds of analyses being wrong is the anomaly. Humans were riding the edge of a Malthusian catastrophe through most of history and that didn't really change until the industrial revolution — at least for some of us. It is naïve to think that this can't happen again.
- Nasrudith 1y ago
  That sounds more like Malthusianism is a memetic fixation based upon past collective trauma than an assessment of actual conditions. It isn't anything rational, just an Idée fixe The assessment should change with the industrial revolution, specialization to allow understanding, and great increase of power availability. This isn't even like the Bronze Age collapse.

baq 1y ago

The analysis assumes resources are finite and exponential growth is impossible, then makes educated guesses at how some quantities interact. Are you arguing that the model didn’t predict fracking correctly or what’s your point exactly?

cyberax 1y ago
Well, _eventually_ the growth might stop. But the growth doesn't automatically mean that it happens because of the resource use increase. Growth often results in technologies that use _less_ resources: cars and lighting are prime examples. > Are you arguing that the model didn’t predict fracking correctly or what’s your point exactly? I'm arguing that predicting the exact point where the growth limits are reached is impossible. Especially when it's not due to something fundamental like the Sun's total energy output multiplied by the lowest possible entropy increase quantum.
eru 1y ago
We are sitting on a giant pile of matter, and we get a steady stream of fresh energy from the sun everyday. Yes, resources are technically finite, but we are a long way away from that mattering. Until then, there's a limit on how cheap we can get our resources---and human ingenuity is chipping away on that. But scarcely a limit on the absolute amount of resources. > Are you arguing that the model didn’t predict fracking correctly or what’s your point exactly? The model didn't predict anything correctly. Fracking is just something on top of people's minds now, but the model didn't take the green revolution into account, when that was already underway when they formulated it.
thereisnospork 1y ago
> These kinds of analyses are just pure BS At risk of speaking for the parent, I think that sentence sums it up. Specious is the fancier word for it. These 'analyses' take a myopic view of a complex buffered system and well beyond the predictive power of the analysis. Kind of like saying $MSFT went up 1pct today, so by this time next year it will be up 365% and in a decade its exponential growth will collapse the economy. For a recent non-contrived example, projections of electric vehicle ownership haven't exactly followed expectations.
csomar 1y ago
Resources are potentially infinite and that's ignoring that we are consuming a non-perceptible amount in the visible universe. We are a long way from consuming anything.
- piva00 1y ago
  They're only potentially infinite if we figure out ways to expend an ever-increasing exponential amount of energy to capture them. Energy is cost, there's absolutely no way to know if we will figure a way to produce the energy required to extract resources from outside our planet, even less to know if we won't expend the most easily accessible resources before we can start digging for more outside of Earth. We should be treating our accessible resources as finite, and improve the efficiency of using them, just to make sure we can keep enough until all the breakthroughs we need to explore resources outside of Earth exist. It's like the propaganda from the oil industry, talking about how plastics are so damn important for modern life and we couldn't live without the oil industry. It's absolutely true, but it also gives a very clear argument on why we shouldn't be wasting fossil resources to be burnt for energy if we can find other ways to access energy, we should be keeping as much as possible of this finite resource (which very likely doesn't even exist in any close proximity to Earth) for its more useful material products like plastics.

yieldcrv 1y ago

> about how oil was going to become unaffordably scarce by 2020. right before the fracking revolution happened. and before that the same thing happened. you can find books in the library from the 70's saying the same thing about oil by the year 2000 all that's happened is that commodity economics kick in. the scarcity of oil prompts people to pay more for the oil. the higher price of oil makes investors realize they can write larger checks to people aiming to explore for oil in harder to reach places with expensive machinery, to make enough to pay back the investors. which is why deep sea expeditions took off, which is why fracking took off the trend is likely to continue this is what occurs in some other commodity markets as well

adastra22 1y ago
That book from the 70's was Limits to Growth.
- yieldcrv 1y ago
  it was a kids picture book about a very often repeated peak oil idea
  - adastra22 1y ago
    Which is all downstream of Limits. That's where it started.

csomar 1y ago

There can be various ways to approach this: - We are collapsing but it is not the dramatic collapse everyone is expecting it to be. If population "slowly" declines consistently, eventually, there will be too few people. If you have a 2 million year graph, this era will look like a sharp spike for a very short time. - We are adapting but fracking prevented that from happening in the West and other places. Because China didn't have that luxury, they had to push through solar energy. This provides hope that the exponential growth will continue as energy is abundant around us. So there you have it. I can see arguments to each side of the coin and am not sure which way it'll play.

_Algernon_ 1y ago

Looking at all of human history, these kinds of analyses being wrong is the anomaly. Humans were riding the edge of a Malthusian catastrophe through most of history and that didn't really change until the industrial revolution — at least for some of us. It is naïve to think that this can't happen again.

Nasrudith 1y ago
That sounds more like Malthusianism is a memetic fixation based upon past collective trauma than an assessment of actual conditions. It isn't anything rational, just an Idée fixe The assessment should change with the industrial revolution, specialization to allow understanding, and great increase of power availability. This isn't even like the Bronze Age collapse.