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MIT Institute's Gloomy Prediction: 'Global Economic Collapse' By 2030
suraj.sun writes "A new study from researchers at Jay W. Forrester's institute at MIT says that the world could suffer from 'global economic collapse' and 'precipitous population decline' if people continue to consume the world's resources at the current pace. The study's researchers created a computing model to forecast different scenarios based on the current models of population growth and global resource consumption, different levels of agricultural productivity, birth control and environmental protection efforts. Most of the computer scenarios found population and economic growth continuing at a steady rate until about 2030. But without 'drastic measures for environmental protection,' the scenarios predict the likelihood of a population and economic crash."
In other news, the sun is bright.
From the original source of garbage in garbage out.
How do we keep the Internet running? Come on, this is about priories.
On the one hand, people have been predicting the imminent collapse of civilization for quite a while now with nothing to show for it. On the other hand, our high-tech society is basically a house of cards and it has to collapse sooner or later.
Forrester's group, btw, are the same folks who produced the Club of Rome-funded "Limits to Growth" study in the early '70s, which also predicted serious trouble around 2030. You can choose to read this as consistency, good initial assumptions, or simply a pig-headed insistence on sticking to his original premises rather than admit error, as you wish.
Were they using SimCity, Civilization, or simply the Sims to predict what is glaringly obvious.
i can imagine the Civilization model:
World ends in 2030 when Bismarck conquers Spain!
Didn't they learn anything from the Prophets of Old? Now if this doesn't happen then the people who made this prophecy will be beheaded and their other work entirely discredited. Here let me fix this for them.
I predict Global economics collapse by 2113
Now in a century or so there will be crazies doing all sorts of nuts stuff based upon my ancient and wise prediction. Now just imagine if I made a calendar system and decided to stop at the year 2113 instead.
But without "drastic measures for environmental protection," the scenarios predict the likelihood of a population and economic crash.
Such as a one child law? The lottery? Soylent green?
What kind of drastic measures do they mean?
Please list below any advancements since 1994 that seriously reduced resource consumption. I can't think of any.
The same frauds are making the same claims in the same ways for 50 years. They are physical scientists who don't understand economics, with new technology and substitutes leading to ever-increasing quality and length of life -- sans goverment intervention.
Theodore Roosevelt decried the coming "timber crisis" because rotting railroad ties would soon consume all lumber production at current replacement rates. Then someone invented using creosote coatings.
Yes, you can predict this will happen. That is Julian Simon's theory, used to make predictions which come true over and over and over again. Said computer models don't include millions of scientists and engineers in a free society working to satisfy mass wants for profits, which call into existence new tech all the time. This is just the latest in sub-sentient drooling idiocy, disproven again and again and again.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Nevermind, I just lost all faith in the story:
However, the study said "unlimited economic growth" is still possible if world governments enact policies and invest in green technologies that help limit the expansion of our ecological footprint.
Forrester model uses difference equations to link economic sectors. The solution to difference equation is an exponential. An exponential goes to zero or infinity given enough time.
This group was wrong in the 1970s. And is still wrong in the 2010s.
Our societies are now based on rampant consumerism and the freedom of the individual to do whatever they want, so long as it's not illegal and they can pay for it. As a result, we have gone from a few hundred million to seven billion people within a century. If we value our natural world, we will find some way to check this growth sooner rather than later.
Is they assume that we will go on like business is usual. As soon as scarcity of a resource gets past a point we go and find alternatives. The Prius came popular at US gas went over $4.00 a gallon back in 2008. Then when prices went down the Prius wasn't popular and now it is getting popular again at $4.00. For US consumers $4.00 a gallon is a price enough to evoke change in behavior and look for alternatives.
We tend not to deplete a resource if possible, but when it gets scarce enough we go for alternatives. If pork or cattle get to expensive we go with less resource needed chickens or turkeys.
Usually the things that us humans kill off forever, are things that at least in our short term mindset see are things that are not directly useful for us. We don't see a drop in cattle. But we see a drop in wolves, as they are in competition with us for our cattle... So we kill the wolves, they are not really a direct resource for us so they killed. As well as lot of bugs and other animals. I am not saying this is a good thing we should work hard to preserve nature for it is better in the long term. But as human nature when scarcity happens we change our behavior, and we wont change our behavior until we feel the effect of scarcity.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The wonderful thing about this prediction is that it is testable.
Nothing is going to change significantly in the next 18 years, so we will see whether this prediction is accurate.
My guess: It isn't accurate.
So you'll be old, unable to work, and have no money? How is that "good timing" for you?
An economic collapse won't just let you alone, you know. Actually, the people with kids are more likely to survive (and prosper): they will have children willing and able to support them. You? You'll have a mostly worthless retirement fund. You may not have though this all the way through.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Please list below any advancements since 1994 that seriously reduced resource consumption. I can't think of any.
Maybe not reduce resource consumption but increase resources. 1994 is when genetically modified foods were introduced to massively increase crop yields. (Coincidentally cancer rates have skyrocketed)
I'm not finding fault with this study, but the conclusion seems to have stepped outside the realm of science and into politics by assuming (at least this is the impression the article gives) that government policy is the only way to limit the growth of our ecological footprint.
The good old freedom-loving alternative has inspired such movies as Mad Max 2.
It's peculiar how science is only OK as long as its conclusions are harmless to powerful interests.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Most of the computer scenarios found population and economic growth continuing at a steady rate until about 2030.
Well then, they're bullshit. Every single country in the world that has ever industrialized has experienced steep declines in population growth as its citizens become wealthier and more educated. This trend is already very noticeable in the up-and-coming Asian and BRIC countries. There is no reason, none whatsoever, to assume that the trend will not apply (gradually) to every other country as they find their way to productive governments and growth--in fact, really, only Africa and the Middle East are left at this point, and thing there are starting to change.
There can be only one reason to base models on such a startlingly unlikely assumption...
Malthus would have been correct, save for the development of atmospheric nitrogen-fixing processes for making fertilizer.
We are currently using 10 calories worth of energy (mostly from non-renewable petro-chemicals) to make 1 calorie of food --- this is not sustainable, and rising food prices will eventually push the poorest of the poor into starvation, unless there is some sort of intervention.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Some times you just need to start over. I'm well stocked with solver coins, shotgun shells, peanut butter, and tampons. I'll be able to trade for whatever I need in the collapse.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Land Area of the Earth: 148,940,000 km^2
Population of the Earth 7,000,000,000
Land Area Per Person: 0.02127 km2 -> 21270m^2
So approx 200m x 100m (americans read yds per person)
But then there are mountains, desert, barren lands, asphalt to take into account.
Lets say 100m x 100m per person (roughly 2 football fields). That is the source of your food, your clothes, ....
This is ignoring all other life as that is likely part of the food chain that feeds us.
And that land is used year after year, getting less fertile, limited resources disappearing, getting smaller and smaller as more people appear.
So, the data started to decouple from predictions, circa year 2000. It seems rather convenient to say that 1970-2000 matches the model, and then simply ignore 2000-onward.
And could we maybe narrow down that prediction a bit, too? Anything between economic collapse (zero) and "unlimited economic growth" is pretty open-ended. (And what the fuck does the term "unlimited economic growth" actually mean, anyway? Money growing on trees?)
Reading predictions of economic doom always brings to mind a quote from "The West Wing" about how economists and futurologists almost always fail to account for technological progress:
BARTLET: You ever read Paul Erlich's book?
TOBY: "The Population Bomb"?
BARTLET: Yeah. He wrote it in 1968. Erlich said it was a fantasy that India would ever feed itself. Then Norman Borlaug comes along. See the problem was wheat is top-heavy. It was falling over on itself and it took up too much space. The dwarf wheat... it was an agricultural revolution that was credited with saving one billion lives.
Why would people advance technology when they can seek rent on existing technology?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
As soon as I read this I stopped reading.
"However, the study said "unlimited economic growth" is still possible if world governments enact policies and invest in green technologies that help limit the expansion of our ecological footprint."
Firstly, "unlimited economic growth" isn't possible unless we get off this rock (difficult), and even that just opens the timescale up quite a bit. Here is a great (if depressing) discussion prompted by the same book mentioned in the article. http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/can-economic-growth-last/
Second, the statement turns what seemed an interesting research conclusion into "the sky is falling, but give us enough money and you'll all be fine." It could be that this wording is different than what is in the actual report, but I can't find a link to it.
A focus on increasing the efficiency with which we use our resources is important, but this sounds like an unrealistic promise in order to obtain funding. This close to the wall we should be focused on how to make a transition to the steady state economy more orderly and less disruptive so that we can keep chugging towards the next breakthrough technology that will get us back into growth for a while, and perhaps eventually off earth so that we can delay the inevitable even more. Allocating large amounts of resources to finding that next breakthrough only gets us relatively little time if it succeeds, and it neglects the risk that if we fail we could have a sudden transition to steady state which would cause a great deal more suffering than is necessary.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
I think he means the childless will have more money for stockpiling food/ammo than the ones who are currently sinking everything into minivans and designer sports accessories.
No sig today...
I'm not finding fault with this study, but the conclusion seems to have stepped outside the realm of science and into politics by assuming (at least this is the impression the article gives) that government policy is the only way to limit the growth of our ecological footprint.
The good old freedom-loving alternative has inspired such movies as Mad Max 2.
It's peculiar how science is only OK as long as its conclusions are harmless to powerful interests.
These models aren't science. They are at best educated guesses, based on mathematical models that are necessarily unable to predict changes to birthrate or sustainability that occur in the future. This isn't a problem with the models or science: the problem is in granting these models more power than they have. I have little doubt that the models are correct: if the present trends stay exactly the same, collapse will happen when they say it will.
The trends never stay the same. Little exercise: create a population (or economic) model for human civilization using any time in history. It will predict a peak population (or population explosion) at some other point in history (usually a couple hundreds years from the chosen time). Yet guess what? Humanity has continued to expand well past that predicted limits, because these models are inherently unable to predict changes in the trends: they can only be based on current or historical trends, and those always change unpredictably.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
...to be old with nobody to look after you.
"Retirement" is only an option when you have savings or someone supporting you like government or family. In a situation like MIT spells out you will not be retiring. Stay healthy.
I'm sure you feel superior referring to the rest of the world as dummies and breeders. But the passion and drive of young people is a key element in making the world a better place. You have failed to renew that resource. You are a cynic. Cynics do not change the world. They just stand to the side and watch while making snide remarks.
Easy. Enjoy life, enjoy all those little pleasures that are either immoral or you get fat/sick from them. Drop dead before the onset of senility. QED.
Every single male from my extended family during the last 2 generations has dropped dead from heart attack/stroke way before they turned into barely moving lump of protein requiring 3 nurses, 2 iPads and a mobile toilet to "live". Me, with my pack a cigarets a day - I am expecting the same fate. Long life is not as nice as people think...so no, I have covered that angle (ergo, no need for children to take care of me).
If am wrong, I've covered that angle too - as a scientist and a person with enormous interest in all kinds of subjects I keep my mind very busy, so no senility for me. Thus, when the body really starts giving up but the mind is still clear...well, meet my little friend - 2L bottle with compressed nitrogen and a face mask. You cannot fire me, I quit! (bonus: no (grand) children will be hurt by my action).
Rationality - can't beat it! So join it!
Historically everyone who has predicted the end of the world has been wrong. Some guys twice in a row.
I'll never understand so-called environmentalists who go out and have 5 or 6 kids. I can think of nothing quite so environmentally irresponsible...
-S
Just how many "environmentalists who go out and have 5 or 6 kids" are there? You sound like you made a study of this, what was the conclusion? That we are being over-run by the children of "environmentalists who go out and have 5 or 6 kids"?
Screw that, I'm breeding my own personal army.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
I am not an expert on container shipping, but this was one of the first things I thought to search for on Google:
https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1954135
Here you have an algorithm for reducing the amount of work done at ports, which means less energy consumption or in other words less resource consumption. Assuming, of course, that it does not simply encourage more consumption for the same amount of resources.
The real problem that the world faces is not that technology is increasing resource consumption; technology is making things more efficient. The problem is that the demand for things keeps increasing as more and more countries join the high-tech revolution.
Palm trees and 8
It's (or it should be) kind of shocking the attitudes shown here by these several posters regarding children. Reading some of these cynical/mock threatening comments depresses me.
I'm a parent myself - let me say, it's really hard work. There's very little down time, doing it well requires the bulk of your concentration and resources, and you may never feel like you get out of it what you put into it. But having kids is the ultimate 'pay it forward'. If you want the future to be better, give some young people (yours or others) the tools to understand and thrive in the world, hopefully make it better than they found it.
It should be obvious to an Slashdotters, however optimistic they are about the Singularity, Transhumanism, etc that if nobody's making and raising kids, the future is forfeit.
May you live in interesting times.
Historically everyone who has predicted the end of the world has been wrong. Some guys twice in a row.
That really depends on your definition of end of the world. MIT is not forcasting the end of the world. They are forcasting a large population decline. Those have happened several times in history. (Black Death, Small Pox in New World) Citation needed on them never being predicted. Large economic collapses have also occured in the past.
That is why the Christians don't see any point in conservation for the future because they pray for their evil god to destroy the world, so it does not matter if they leave nothing for the next generation.
Wow. Massive generalization much?
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
Screw that, I'm breeding my own personal army.
Hey, is that you Jango Fett
They had it upside down. World ends in 5105.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Go study population ecology. The population of many/most organisms goes in the same sort of cycles. It's most drastic in insects and micro organisms, but also applies on longer scales to larger creatures.
The population will stay mostly low and constant for a time, and then when the conditions are right, there will be an abundance of resources (food), and the population will spike. Breeding will increase exponentially until the resources aren't enough. Rather than just some of the population dying off to keep balance - the vast, vast majority starves. The population is then less than where it started, and the cycle will repeat with time.
Humans aren't immune to this! It just happens over much longer time scales.
It's not about avoiding breeding completely as a society - it's about using our intellect and breeding a lot less so that we don't all die of starvation because our resource production can't keep up. Unless we can do that, we're really not much smarter than grasshoppers, and no, I'm not an optimist.
It's easy to make a prediction when it's so far off into the future that you know no one will remember you even making it when it doesn't come true. It's like a President promising to put a man on Mars long after his administration is gone. It's an easy promise to make when you know no one is ever going to be able to hold you accountable for it (and even if they tried, you could just blame your successors).
I can predict anything as long as it's far enough off in the future for people to forget it if I'm wrong. Obligatory xkcd.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
We actually are not overpopulated. What we are is under energized. With enough nuclear and solar power, most of the fossil fuels can be used for fertilizer or synthesized. Sea water can be desalinated and the worlds aquifers can be replenished. 7 to 10 billion is easily sustainable if we were not so god damn retarded about solution to energy scarcity. Hell, if we got radical enough with vertical hydroponic food production we might even be able to support a hundred billion humans indefinitely.
"One of these days I'll be right, damn it! Then you'll be sorry, you'll ALL be sorry!"
And the one thing in common with every major pandemic, catastrophe, and economic collapse has had in common? No one ever saw them coming.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
How to Survive the Coming Apocalypse?
I'm rather surprised their predictions are not for an earlier date. I have been keeping in the back of my mind the idea of joining a permaculture farm in some tropical locale (I'm in Costa Rica, so it wouldn't be too much of a change), hopefully one with solar power, but I would hate to say goodbye in any permanent sense to the global internet and the benefits of a developed manufacturing society. So, if the world does come to an end, what electronics would be possible to construct? Hand wire-wrapped 8-bit processors? What could be done for a screen? Is it possible to manufacture DIY LEDs? What data storage might be possible? Archival "100 year" CDs exist, but what about an archival 100-year CD reader? Is an "Encyclopedia Galactica" possible?
Lastly, is it overly cynical to believe that these goals are more possible than the change necessary to avert this catastrophe?
P.S. It strikes me that there are few things humanity is worse at than predicting the future. However, in a world where the economy can barely survive normal human activities, but which is subject to a multitude of natural disasters, I imagine that the only question concerning a collapse of human society is when we may expect it.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
I'll try to have as many kids as possible, if I ever start believing in collapse, on the theory that the more I have, the better the chances one or a few will survive whatever the (grim) future may hold.
You are free to step out of my way at any time, by the way. Having already taken the needed steps to avoid inconveniencing my descendants, it would be only a small additional effort to ensure their world will be a tad less poor.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
Not gonna blame in on W, but I would *mightily* impressed if someone could provide reasonable arguments of how his administration did anything to improve the situation.
They went away.
What do I win?
That is why the Christians don't see any point in conservation for the future because they pray for their evil god to destroy the world, so it does not matter if they leave nothing for the next generation.
Wow. Massive generalization much?
Yes, I probably do generalize a bit much. That does not change the fact that the political arm of American Christianity is rabidly anti-conservation for the reason that I stated. They believe that their god will destroy the world before it matters.
20 year predictions are generally little more than glorified guessing.
Think back 20 years. That's 1992. That means no Facebook, no Google, no Slashdot either. You'd run Windows 3.1 or if you are amongst the geekiest of the geeks, Linux 0.1 or so. But you had to roll it on your own because there are no distributions (Slackware started in '93).
Yugoslavia had just started breaking apart. The war in Afghanistan just ended. I'm talking about the soviet invasion.
That's for context. Now on the long-term "visions". We had the Earth Summit , so climate change was already on the agenda.
Economically, there was no Euro. The economical collapse of Russia was yet to come, as was the economic crisis of the Asian nations. Had you asked people what the future would bring, they would have likely extrapolated from Black Wednesday the way we would extrapolate from the current financial crisis. Chinas rise to power was just beginning and most people, including experts, wouldn't have predicted it, because it was in late 1992 that the government turned towards even a bit of capitalism.
In healthcare, we didn't yet have bird-flu and pandemics, AIDS was the scare of the day. We also didn't have LASIK, stem cells or any of the other recent advantages. Antibiotics were considered undefeatable by many.
And so on and so forth. There's a lot of big events that a prediction made in 1992 would've missed completely. Yes, we can extrapolate population growth somewhat, but we can't account for inventions in agriculture, for example.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Except us. Fortunately, I'm already working on my remote outpost. There's a decent water source, and it happens to be a great place for harvesting methane.
In addition, I've got a short guy, and a really big guy who work well together. I also have a few designs for a small coliseum in the center for entertainment.
Not this shit again. The US government has been giving carte blanche to companies for a decade now. Companies have a ton of freedom. The result, more oppression instead of less. We have private industries running prisons. Guess what? Elected judges have to justify any acquittals now or else they will lose their campaign donations. It isn't the USG who wants to see a pothead put away for life, it is the company who gets the bucks for warehousing the pothead who wants to keep their beds full.
Your complete platform which has been argued and modded down into oblivion more times than I can count is just plain wrong. Had a single shred of roman_mir's garbage actually hold true, the late 1800s until 1930s in the US would have been a Utopia for all, because during those times, companies ran the show, and the US government was just there to provide militias when the Pinkertons couldn't do the job.
We *need* government to intervene. Otherwise the only thing that will be looked at with populations is how much money can we milk from them, this quarter, next quarter and the future be damned. If we let companies run the show, the only energy sources our grandkids will have will be coal and oil, and they will spend most of their salaries trying to get it. However, if we bite the bullet and start making modern reactors, the oil crisis can be mitigated, something private industry does not want.
Uhm, might it be that we actually reduced sulfur dioxide emissions by a huge margin since the 80s, precisely because of those warnings? By the way, by a mechanism called cap and trade?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Your meds. Take them. Ozone? Acid Rain? Largely fixed because of those warnings and because of no one listening to denialist idiots. Global cooling? Never seriously been predicted. Compare the word frequencies over a large english corpus here. Well, watch out for those black helicopters. If you let your attention slip for just one second, the global government will get you. Comrade.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
If you don't have any kids you may be on your own, especially if your computer dies before you do.
FTFY.
None of us know everything. Therefore we're all naïve.
No. I am being completely honest. I was born into a fundamentalist christian cult. I know them from the inside out in a way that no outsider ever really can.
As Scotty says, ``I canna change the laws of physics, Captain!''.
The development of the Birkeland–Eyde process and the use of petrochemicals has extended the timeline, but the math underlying Malthus' models is still sound, and I for one don't want to live in the world of _Silent Running_ --- there's a fixed amount of surface area, a limited amount of solar energy and while the idea of a world population bounded only by those things may sound nice to an idealist, it's not one which has room for wild animals, and places and recreation.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
e-ink.
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=619831&postcount=11
The vast majority of trees which are cut for paper pulp are quick-growing loblolly pines which will be re-planted almost immediately, larger, older, nicer trees are usually cut for lumber, so one should be able to let the 8.85 pounds of CO_2 for per book figure stand for paper products w/o concern for deforestation.
Here's a page which indicates most CO_2 production is for energy:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/carbon.html
And here's a page which indicates that CO_2 production is a much larger problem for the manufacturing of electronics:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/49730
w/ a ratio of 12 to 1 for energy usage to weight, so my PRS-505 weighs roughly 9 ozs., so presumably required 108 ounces of fuel to manufacture (on-going energy usage is discounted as being negligible so is not considered)
http://www.epa.gov/oms/climate/420f05001.htm
gives us a figure of 19.4 pounds of CO_2 per gallon of gasoline which equals roughly 16.36875 pounds of CO_2 to make the ebook reader.
So getting two books for the Sony should make it roughly break even, and each printed book beyond that which is not purchased should result in a net reduction of CO_2 emissions, since the energybulletin.net page indicates that the embodied energy usage for electronics is much greater than the lifetime usage.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
What everybody seems to be missing is the simple fact that unsustainable lifestyles are unsustainable, and increasing consumption of finite reserves is unsustainable. It really doesn't matter if it's in 2030, or if the model precisely matches reality (it is only a model after all) the fact that remains is that if you continue on an unsustainable course you will not be able to sustain it!
Those who don't understand history are doomed to repeat it. Every civilization has collapsed because of some form of unsustainability and then been reduced to a simpler more sustainable way of living. We either design and engineer this 'collapse' into a simpler way of living or we'll have to accept the period of anarchy that will ensue.
Don't worry, the second foundation will take care of it! (that's a joke!)
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
According to skepticalscience.com global cooling warnings were based on the assumption that sulfur dioxide emissions would quadruple, which was apparently a reasonable guess at the time. Then pretty much everybody put limits on sulfur dioxide emissions so the problem went away. The problem with fixing problems before they happen, is that you always wonder if there was a problem to begin with.
Well, that's what you get for living in the southern hemisphere. It'd be much easier if they'd just stand the right way up like those of us in the north do.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Yet guess what? Humanity has continued to expand well past that predicted limits,
It's not so exponential if you look more closely. There was an explosion each time a technological revolution happened, then it was ebb and flow until the next one, and ebbs tended to include events like famine and epidemics. No technological revolution was at hand at the right time in a few isolated places such as Easter Island, where societies never rose back to former levels.
Our current explosion coincided with use of fossil fuels. Think of it: the entire history of United States of America has been a history of expansion. At first there was enough land to colonize, you just had to get rid of some pesky Indians. Then there was the Industrial Revolution, oil-fueled agriculture able to feed more people, computers bringing increased efficiency. People under 30 who have been living in the developed world all their life have no experience of serious shortages of any kind (read up on 1970s oil crises, the lessons of those mild shocks may become useful soon). So energy descent will necessarily bring a great cultural shift.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Was it upside down and rotated pi rads? Only way for 2s to become 5s is vertical flip; the only way for the 1 and 0 to switch is through rotation. I suppose it could be mirrored horizontally ( 2012 | 5105 ) but thats not exactly upside down.
Read Tainter's "Collapse of Complex Civilizations".
Yes, it's happened and yes, it will happen again.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If you want to see this in action, look at suburban deer populations where hunting is illegal. If there's no predator to cull the population, they're instead constrained by resources and disease.
Deer population info, with link to deer population graph: http://deerdamagecontrolfence.com/deer_population.htm
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
Economics, that is why.
Lets take one resource we heavily depend on: Oil. Suppose we deplete a significant amount of oil wells, what will happen? well laws of supply and demand kick in: as supply becomes shorter, the price of oil goes up. As the price of oil goes up, it will be used progressively less and less since alternatives become more and more attractive in comparison. The whole point of a prices in markets is that there the amount of buyers match the amount of suppliers. Through pricing, the market has a way to ration ALL resources efficiently. This effectively means that we WILL NEVER RUN OUT OF OIL, that we will simply use less of it as it becomes more scarce, but there will always be some available for those willing to pay the price. In fact, we use oil today not because it is the only way to power our cars, but only because it is the cheapest (most efficient).
Another thing they ignore is advances in technology. Take fracking for example, we can extract oil and natural gas from places we never could before. As technology improves, so does our ability to get more and more resources. All these models completely ignore the fact that we will come up with better and more efficient ways to get more resources.
The only thing that can and does stop this natural and efficient rationing of resources are governments.
They put a caviat and say: "if we continue consuming resources at the current pace". Completely overlooking the fact that markets would not allow the current pace to continue when scarcity increases. That is like saying: "If I continue climbing up this mountain at the current pace, I will get to space in a month"
That is why the Christians don't see any point in conservation for the future because they pray for their evil god to destroy the world, so it does not matter if they leave nothing for the next generation.
Wow. Massive generalization much?
Yes, I probably do generalize a bit much. That does not change the fact that the political arm of American Christianity is rabidly anti-conservation for the reason that I stated. They believe that their god will destroy the world before it matters.
And you were right to say it. Anybody who doesn't factor that in, is stupid. They're also trying to set Israel up to be destroyed so their evil god can come back. Maher actually has a hilarious bit on this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8glzLdJvYM
History is an excellent guide. Plenty of societies have been faced with existential challenges. Some of them died. Others fell under the domination of societies that coped better or did not face the same limitations[1]. A very few survived (you can probably count them on your fingers).
History is written by the survivors. Our history is that of the societies that survived. In North America, that recent history is exceptional: over a hundred years of peace within our borders. If by "history" you mean living memory, you are correct. Though if you back just a little farther and consider history from a native perspective, many societies died or fell under domination here. People adapt - but that's no guarantee that our society will be among the survivors.
Market societies are extremely recent, arising only in late 18th century England, before which point the vast majority of the population lived from subsistence agriculture[2]. Market society was then deliberately constructed through government action. How markets are constructed matters very much: they do fail, particularly when it comes to public goods and the environment.
Nor do markets somehow escape the limitations of nature. The rise of industrial capitalism corresponds to the exploitation of fossil fuels. Markets did not create coal and oil: they only discovered them. Would capitalism have been successful if they were not there to be found? One thing capitalism does extremely well is to replace one resource for another. When a resource grows scarce or expensive, something else is substituted. An efficient capitalist economy may not run out of anything: until it runs out of everything[3]. The problem-solving efficiency of markets can actually make the economy more fragile, not less.
[1] Jared Diamond's Collapse examines numerous examples.
[2] See Karl Polanyi's book The Great Transformation for a fascinating account of this. For a broader view of capitalism before this point, see Fernand Braudel's The Wheels of Commerce (Capitalism & Civilization 15th-18th Century Vol. 2).
[3] Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies argues that a societies develop they realize diminishing marginal returns from adaptation and innovation. When the marginal returns turn negative, they collapse. The only solution he sees is an external energy subsidy - which is where our problem lies.
No. I am being completely honest. I was born into a fundamentalist christian cult. I know them from the inside out in a way that no outsider ever really can.
Ditto, and ditto. Those nice Lutherans down the street? That's not who we're talking about. You think Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin were hyping stuff up for the cameras? Maybe they were, but there are a lot of people who believe _exactly_ what those two say they believe. And worse.
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
And the one thing in common with every major pandemic, catastrophe, and economic collapse has had in common? No one ever saw them coming.
Only people who put fingers in their ears and say "LALALA, I can't hear you!".
The Club of Rome made a prediction forty years ago that's coming pretty close to reality. RTFA and take a look at the comparative plots.
1. Liebig's Law of the Minimum. It only takes one critical resource failure to slow the entire train.
2. Ah, the 'many advancements in technology since the 1970's'. Still using fossil fuels for the vast majority of our energy production (see No. 1). Where's your personal nuclear power plant / fuel cell? Where, in fact, is your gen III nuc plant - the one with 1970's technology? Got fusion? Seen a Thorium Cycle Reactor recently?
Cornucopians always amuse me. I wonder how many of them take apart their iPhone looking for the pixie dust.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Is it just me or should all these Green/malthusian/progressive idiots be de-tenured and sacked so some one who wants to crate can get paid. I am so sick of Global Warming, Climate Change, weather Wierding, Club of Rome Socialist crap!
None of these idiots would know an opportunity if it bit them.
The only thing wrong is these types breed and go to good universities to tell us this never ending immature nonsense
MFG, omb
Sad, isn't it. Reagan, whom I consider to be the beginning of the downfall of honest conservatism in the US, started a cap and trade program in order to actually conserve the environment from a scientifically shown threat. Today, a similar program is decried as "socialist" by his successors. Isn't it indeed sad to see a party and their followers slip beyond understanding, beyond understandability into a gibbering madness of toxic hate? What chance is there to even communicate with the Tea Party, with people who try to enact legislation against Agenda 21 programs to conserve a little piece of the environment, on grounds of fear of a "world government"? What rational basis can be reached with people like that? Believe me, I try to understand, but I fail, and the other side does not help. Not a little bit.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
What you mean is, the people who saw them coming weren't listened to. Many forecasters saw the recent real estate bubble collapsing, e.g. It's true that nobody picked the exact hour, but that's rather irrelevant.
If you say nobody saw the previous disasters coming, I'll ask "How do you know?". I expect they did. (Well, not smallpox in the new world, that was largely germ warfare, and only foreseen by those practicing it.) As to why you don't hear about them, how often to you hear, even now, about those who foresaw the housing bubble? Then why would you expect to find it easy to find prior accurate "prophets of doom"? People don't like to hear bad news, and they also don't like to be reminded that they were wrong. This is a powerful force suppressing historical records of those who gave warnings previously, as well as recently.
P.S.: That the collapse of the Holland "Tulip mania" bubble was foreseen is denoted by the name given to the event in English. I suspect that you would find few references in Dutch that predicted it's collapse.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
And the one thing in common with every major pandemic, catastrophe, and economic collapse has had in common? No one ever saw them coming.
This got modded Insightful? It's just plain wrong. You cannot say, categorically, that no one saw them coming. Most people did not. Important People in the news media didn't. But that doesn't mean no one did. For example, the housing and economic crash of 2008 was predicted by many. Few listened, but that doesn't mean it wasn't predicted.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Global Warming might lead to catastrophic ecological damage and the vast majority of climate scientists see it coming, but there are powerful special interests with huge amounts of money that are opposed to the changes needed to avoid or reduce the impacts.
More and more virus strains are appearing that are resistant to many or all antibiotics, but have we stopped giving low levels of antibiotics to livestock, which hastens the day when viruses are immune to all our drugs? No.
If the human race manages to exterminate itself, it will probably be because the moneyed special interests always take the short term profit and ignore the long term peril.
Methinks MIT is being overly optimistic. We're very near the brink right now. All it will take is some small incident and we're over the edge in a heartbeat.
HA! Bring on the apocalypse. As long as most of humanity goes with me, I don't mind dying. I'm getting aggravated watching the obese coke chugging TV watching normalcy biased armchair partisans destroy hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution. If Q from Next Generation was here, he'd say "So long, its been good". Unless someone gets off their ass and organizes some kind of... Change... We're fucked. The sooner the better I say. I'm stocking up on popcorn.
Global cooling? Never seriously been predicted.
That's not really true, there is no scientist today who denies the reality of ice ages, nor doubts that another one is coming. The only question is how long until it happens. You can find textbooks from the 50s and 60s that make this clear, and discuss potential solutions.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."