Earth's Resources Used Up at Quickest Rate Ever in 2016 (france24.com)

An anonymous reader writes: In just over seven months, humanity has used up a full year's allotment of natural resources such as water, food and clean air -- the quickest rate yet, according to a new report. The point of "overshoot" will officially be reached on Monday, said environmental group Global Footprint Network -- five days earlier than last year. "We continue to grow our ecological debt," said Pascal Canfin of green group WWF, reacting to the annual update. "From Monday August 8, we will be living on credit because in eight months we would have consumed the natural capital that our planet can renew in a year."

Comments

From TFA

[almitydave]

To calculate the date for Earth Overshoot Day, the group crunches UN data on thousands of economic sectors such as fisheries, forestry, transport and energy production.

Earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions, it said, are now the fastest-growing contributor to ecological overshoot, making up 60 percent of humanity's demands on nature -- what is called the ecological "footprint".

I've never even heard of this metric. Is this based on real science or climate activism?

Re:From TFA

[umafuckit]

I've never even heard of this metric. Is this based on real science or climate activism?

Whether or not this particular number is "real" or "climate activism" is somewhat irrelevant. The real science is very clearly telling us that our negative impact on the planet is substantial and that this is accelerating. This is the reason for the activism.

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

To calculate the date for Earth Overshoot Day, the group crunches UN data on thousands of economic sectors such as fisheries, forestry, transport and energy production.

Earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions, it said, are now the fastest-growing contributor to ecological overshoot, making up 60 percent of humanity's demands on nature -- what is called the ecological "footprint".

I've never even heard of this metric. Is this based on real science or climate activism?

Well, it's based on empirical data. You'll have to provide your personal definition of "real science" for me. Because, there's no double blind study where we instantiated multiple Earth's on January 1st and then removed all humans from one to use as the control variable. I can't believe I have to explain this but Slashdot is just getting more and more conservative lately so ... it's based on data from prior years and what is reported by country. No, it's not truly falsifiable -- then again you don't have multiple runs at this. No, nobody's actually measuring all the carbon in the air. No, nobody's actually testing that we've saturated the rate at which our resources are being replenished. We're making intelligent estimates. Well, those of us concerned with this stuff are (evidently you aren't).

The part where you said "climate activism" means you're just going into confirmation bias here anyway so even though it won't help, I'll do the very little googling required to find their their numbers here. Just for you. Even though it doesn't matter because you've clearly already made up your mind.

Re:From TFA

[cbeaudry]

It is climate activism and completely useless.

Re:From TFA

[Alomex]

our negative impact on the planet is substantial and that this is accelerating.

[citation needed]

You see population growth is rapidly decelerating, albeit still positive. Hence our impact is likely to be decelerating too.

Re:From TFA

[almitydave]

I've never even heard of this metric. Is this based on real science or climate activism?

Whether or not this particular number is "real" or "climate activism" is somewhat irrelevant. The real science is very clearly telling us that our negative impact on the planet is substantial and that this is accelerating. This is the reason for the activism.

Sure, but good activism needs to have a solid foundation - the world is full of people twisting numbers and facts to suit their ends, and alarmist claims revealed to be based on bogus data do more to hurt the cause than help it. I'm not passing judgment on this particular claim, just asking.

Re:From TFA

[MightyMartian]

How about almost every climatology study done in the last forty years?

I tell you what. If you don't think AGW is real, why don't you explain where all the energy being absorbed by CO2 in the atmosphere is going. Are you advocating the "magic heat sink back into space" theory?

Re:From TFA

[Austerity Empowers]

"climate activism"

A lot of us never trust activists of any kind because they can't help but make themselves untrustworthy. This article is an example of that kind of hysteria. The verbiage used sometimes tends to anthropomorphize consumable resources in a way that begets images of hippies in a drum circle. For example "humanity's demands on nature" conjures images of a haggard old lady being asked for her second kidney because she soon won't need it anymore. That's not science, that's an emotional appeal. From my standpoint the earth is here to be consumed as we see fit, but as we lack a suitable alternative, we probably shouldn't destroy it just yet.

Couple this to some phony attempts to contextualize our ecological disaster in economic terms, which is a stretch at best, makes me want to ignore this entirely.

Not that I disbelieve that we are over-consuming and over-polluting in the slightest. I'm just pointing out why this sort of reporting makes the problem worst, not better and why when people who haven't come around to your point of view, and also do not speak precisely, may try to distinguish "science" from "terrible reporting".

Re:From TFA

[knightghost]

Hence our impact is likely to be decelerating too.

Nope. Rise in per-person economics leads to greater use of resources.

The calculations are correct. The planet can support 3 billion people living at a high (US level) standard of living. Let the resource wars continue...

Re:From TFA

[almitydave]

To calculate the date for Earth Overshoot Day, the group crunches UN data on thousands of economic sectors such as fisheries, forestry, transport and energy production.

Earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions, it said, are now the fastest-growing contributor to ecological overshoot, making up 60 percent of humanity's demands on nature -- what is called the ecological "footprint".

I've never even heard of this metric. Is this based on real science or climate activism?

Well, it's based on empirical data. ... Because, there's no double blind study where we instantiated multiple Earth's on January 1st and then removed all humans from one to use as the control variable....No, it's not truly falsifiable -- then again you don't have multiple runs at this.

Well, obviously, but falsifiability and such apply to theories, not empirical observations.

...(evidently you aren't). The part where you said "climate activism" means you're just going into confirmation bias here anyway so even though it won't help ... Even though it doesn't matter because you've clearly already made up your mind.

You need to get your internet mind-reading device recalibrated. You could have just posted the link (which wasn't in the article for some reason (a pet peeve of mine regarding science reporting)) without the snark: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/public_data_package.

Re:From TFA

[Coisiche]

I suspect that the wars over water are going to be a lot more vicious than the wars over oil ever were.

Re:From TFA

[Speck'sBacon]

You clearly don't understand the term "accelerating" then. Think of driving a car. Even when you're "decelerating," you're still traveling forward, but your speed is slowing. The same applies to population, but replace the word "speed" with "growth," and it's equally accurate.

Re:From TFA

[almitydave]

If you don't think AGW is real, why don't you explain where all the energy being absorbed by CO2 in the atmosphere is going. Are you advocating the "magic heat sink back into space" theory?

What do you think trees and other plants breath?

Theoretically, there is a maximum amount of CO2 plants can absorb in a given year. Theoretically, our output could exceed that, even assuming all the CO2 gets where it needs to go to be absorbed. It's worth looking into.

What do you think the earth did before humans existed when a volcano erupted spewing many times more so-called "greenhouse" gasses into the atmosphere?

Nature occasionally killed nearly every living thing on the planet.

Re:From TFA

[almitydave]

Sadly I am guessing Almitydave is likely over ~40.

Actually under. Do I win something?

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

It's you who are mistaken. As long as the first-order derivative of the population growth rate is a positive number, then it is correct to say that population growth is 'accelerating.'

Re:From TFA

[The Grim Reefer]

Nature occasionally killed nearly every living thing on the planet.

Mankind has never done that. So who's really the evil doer here? I suggest we kill nature as quickly as possible. It's the only way to save the living things on this planet. It's practically self defense.

Re:From TFA

[Jason Levine]

First off, volcanos are dwarfed by the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses that people pump into the atmosphere annually. Secondly, what we pump into the atmosphere came from an area deep underground where it had been sequestered for millions of years. So for millions of years, the trees/plants didn't need to take care of this carbon dioxide and it wasn't part of the natural carbon cycle. Now, though, it's suddenly being tossed into the atmosphere and some people act surprised that the existing plant life can't just magically handle all of the new stuff too.

Will climate change end life on Earth? No, it won't. Might it make life on Earth really horrible for humans? Yes. Our cities on the coastlines (where we've historically loved building cities) will get flooded. Traditional crops won't grow in their usual farm areas and the new areas that have the right temperature might not have suitable farmland/soil conditions. (If you want to grow corn in the new "corn belt" area, it won't be good if that happens to lie on a mountainous terrain.) In short, humans can pay to fix climate change now or we really pay for it later.

Re:From TFA

[nightfire-unique]

You needn't worry. It will always be cheaper to make water than go to war for it.

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

You clearly don't understand the term "accelerating" then. Think of driving a car. Even when you're "decelerating," you're still traveling forward, but your speed is slowing. The same applies to population, but replace the word "speed" with "growth," and it's equally accurate.

No. Think calculus. The rate of increase is lessening. Car analogy: We were accelerating at 20k/h/s. Now we are accelerating at 18k/h/s. Every second that goes by, we are going faster but the amount added is less per second.

The rate of the acceleration is less, while top speed is increasing.

Re:From TFA

[dgatwood]

Well, it's based on empirical data. You'll have to provide your personal definition of "real science" for me.

Empirical data of the rate of consumption is insufficient. Without measuring whether we're really depleting resources faster than they can be replenished, any so-called "allotment" is little more than a fiction. It's an arbitrary number.

If you had done this study in the late 1700s, they would have said that we were at the limits for how many people the world could support, too. Since then, modern agriculture has increased crop yields, brought water to fertile soil that was previously too dry to grow crops, and provided machines that can pick crops at a rate that makes it possible to support a much larger population.

Thus, any discussion of an "allotment" is predicated upon the false assumption that resource shortages are fundamental problems with the world that cannot be corrected through technological means of increasing those resources. It is also predicated upon the dubious assumption that resource shortages won't take care of themselves without out intervention. For example, we panic about CO2 levels, worrying about a runaway greenhouse effect, forgetting that our greenhouse gas percentages are dramatically lower than they were in the distant past. This isn't an experiment. We already have empirical data from previous periods with high greenhouse gas numbers, and we know what happened: plant life flourished, died, got buried, turned into coal, and served as a carbon sink. Anyone arguing that this won't happen again is making an extraordinary claim that demands extraordinary proof.

This is not to say that global warming isn't a concern. It is. It has the potential to turn fertile lands into deserts and vice versa. It has the potential to seriously disturb the geopolitical climate of our planet, and to make the U.S. become much more dependent upon foreign food sources (Canada in particular). It has the potential to raise the sea level, flooding coastal areas where lots of people live. It can make hurricanes and tornadoes more prevalent, costing human lives. But I think it is important to talk about the concern realistically instead of Chicken Littling the subject and acting like we're about to destroy the world. We really aren't. Earth was around for billions of years before us, and will probably be around for billions of years after we're gone.

Re:From TFA

[hey!]

The implicit dichotomy you're asking us to assume is bogus: i.e., that activism can't be based on scientific knowledge. We can't answer the question the way you'd like it to be with out accepting a counter-factual proposition.

Clearly this is activism at any rate. That doesn't make it untrue or unsupported, although obviously one could look critically at the presentation of the data and find flaws in the statistics and methods used.

Now common sense should tell you that we're almost certainly using resources at a higher rate than ever before, simply because the world's population is greater than it has ever been before, and Gross World Product is greater than it has ever been before -- although admittedly some of that is intangible stuff like intellectual property. But it's a safe assumption that we are consuming physical resources at an unprecedented rate.

The most credible line of attack for a figure like this is that it must in some way combine apples and oranges from a dynamic standpoint. For example, suppose you remove a ton of fish from the sea, does that move you a ton closer to depleting fish stocks? You can't say, because it depends on whether fish populations are at, near, or far from equilibrium. Removing fish from a population at equilibrium causes the system to produce exactly enough to produce exactly enough more fish to replace them; hauling the last mommy and daddy fish from the sea destroys that population forever.

So you're on most solid ground when you talk about specific resources. But some kind of composite figure does make sense if you want to think about human impact as a whole, as long as you don't ask too much of such a figure.

Re:From TFA

[sexconker]

You clearly don't understand it.
The chart you provided is "children per woman". That's positive, and if it levels out at "2" as predicted, then the number of children per woman will be 2, but there will be more women. Thus raw growth is accelerating, even if percentage growth is flat. Nothing is decelerating until you take another derivative.

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

and the petroleum-activists of fox "news" ?

Re:From TFA

[daninaustin]

It's based on bullshit. It's been determined that that's the easiest way to generate clicks and outrage from the Prius army.

Re:From TFA

[RabidReindeer]

"false assumption that resource shortages are fundamental problems with the world that cannot be corrected through technological means of increasing those resources"

Which is also a false assumption. People have the most annoying assumptions that everything goes in straight lines or simple curves, or endless cycles.

Technology can be used to mitigate problems. It cannot always make them go away forever, especially when on the bottom line there are only a finite amount of resources that can be exploited even after the best technological solutions in the world are used to leverage them. Usually you run into the Law of Diminishing Returns.

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

He's almost right, so let me give the benefit of the doubt: If population growth is positive, then resource consumption is accelerating (all other things being equal), as was the original claim, even if population growth is decelerating. But he is wrong to state that population growth is accelerating

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

First derivative is velocity, second derivative is acceleration. Second derivative is negative.

Re:From TFA

[Crashmarik]

Thank you Malthus.

Re:From TFA

[wbr1]

Population is not the only thing that increases our use of resources. Increased standards of living do as well. 10 kids in africa probably use less resources than 1-2 in a developed nation.

Re:From TFA

[ChrisMaple]

Change of population over time is the first derivative, called population growth. Acceleration of population is second derivative. Your "growth is accelerating" is third derivative, sometimes called "jerk." Just like you.

Re:From TFA

[ShanghaiBill]

Rise in per-person economics leads to greater use of resources.

That is the general trend, but it is not an iron law. Last year, GDP in America grew, but energy consumption declined. Singapore has a per capita GDP higher than America, yet consumes less than half the per capita resources. They don't have urban sprawl, they don't own SUVs, etc.

Re:From TFA

[Alomex]

Good point, but not to worry, raw growth is also decelerating.

You can see here the medium UN variant (which historically has proven to be too pessimistic) already shows the curve slope decreasing since around 1990, i.e. deceleration of raw growth.

Here's a chart of the growth rate.

Re:From TFA

[Crashmarik]

Are you advocating the "magic heat sink back into space" theory?

That's called radiative cooling

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

When you use the word magic, I think you might try "Thermodynamic" instead.

Re:From TFA

[laurencetux]

lets try it this way

if you are tied to a wall and a truck is crashing into you

1 acceleration going UP means you will splat even more (up to "WHAT CAR??"type speeds)
2 acceleration going DOWN means you will splat less (down to "Nice Chrome on that bumper" type speeds

and there is also the effect a given person has on the planet (a mad Pyro with access to explosives will have a greater impact than a hippie in a commune)

Re:From TFA

[Sir_Eptishous]

Nope. Rise in per-person economics leads to greater use of resources.

Yep.
I was waiting for someone to point this out.

Re:From TFA

[ChrisMaple]

Let's make a huge fleet of ships to seize America's water and send it to poor, suffering Africans. These ships will move over [blank out].

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Barring all those futurists who are, er, scared to death of death being correct and assuming immortality isn't just around the corner (always seems to be conveniently within their lifetime), isn't 2 children per woman a replacement rate? I believe it also takes a man to make those 2 babies :) (For now... or at least you're still going to get 50/50 boy/girl even if you just throw the boys in an incinerator, but despite some cynical comments here and there I don't see that happening so we must assume that it's 2 children, not two girls per woman.) It sounds like they're saying 2045 is when humanity stops growing. (Also barring some horrendous planet-wide extinction event level disaster.)

That's still not really fun to think about. There was another graph that showed 2045 being roughly 9 billion. So, not as zomg overcrowded as I was first thinking, but it's definitely time to think about the engineering problem of living sustainably (locally grown food, water sources, power, etc) in Siberia or Antarctica or the Sahara or on the ocean surface.

Personally while I think the WWF isn't necessarily wrong about what they're trying to say, they tend to ignore that this is really an engineering problem, not a resources problem.

I remember a PSA on the TV when I was a kid. Some guy turns on the water in his bathroom and a pond in the background drains completely dry and the water stops in the bathroom. The problem with environmentalists is that even if they have a very sophisticated model of how this happens, water doesn't simply disappear. Food production simply isn't finite. We don't even live on 100% of the land on this planet, and there's still 2/3s of it covered by water we've just started thinking about utilizing directly with new desalinization technologies or just floating small city-states on. I don't think this planet is anywhere close to "full" or "overcrowded," not really. Yeah, it's overcrowded and more than full if technology stops in 1950, but technology doesn't stop.

I think we can get to 9 or 10 billion just fine, even without sacrificing places like Yellowstone (you wouldn't want to build there anyway!) or the Painted Desert or Grand Canyon just to name North American features that should continue to be preserved in addition to all the state and national parks I love having.

Probably preaching to the choir. I'll get some popcorn and return for the AGW flamewar below.

Re:From TFA

[multi io]

How about almost every climatology study done in the last forty years?

I tell you what. If you don't think AGW is real, why don't you explain where all the energy being absorbed by CO2 in the atmosphere is going. Are you advocating the "magic heat sink back into space" theory?

I think AGW is real, but I fail to see how you get from that to August 8 as a single date of an "overshoot day". Does this imply that, since on August 8 we're about 60% through the year, we'd have to reduce our CO2 output by 40% to completely stop the increase of atmospheric CO2 levels? That doesn't make any sense at all, given that the worldwide CO2 emissions were 40% lower than today roughly 30 years ago, but by that time the CO2 levels had been increasing for more than a century already. So that doesn't make sense at all unless you postulate that the natural CO2 sinks work at a much higher pace at today's CO2 levels compared to those in 1986.

So what does August 8 represent? Are they computing one overshoot day per type of resource (Hydrocarbons, aluminium, copper, ...) and take the average? Or the minimum? And what's a "copper overshoot day" anyways, given that we don't "use up" metals the way we do oil or gas when we burn it. If you count metal as "used up" if it's not recycled but replaced with new raw materials, then the corresponding "overshoot day" would be January 1st because the Earth's crust contains a fixed amount of extractable ores.

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

The first-order derivative is the rate of change, ie how much the population is growing. If that number is positive but never changes the population is always growing but that growth is constant, it's not accelerating. The second-order derivative is how quickly the population growth is changing. If *that* is positive then the population growth is growing.

The current situation is the first-order is positive but the second-order is negative, meaning that while population is still growing the rate at which it's changing is decelerating and so in a number of years may slow to the point where it is no longer growing.

Given that many developed world countries have a birth rate per woman below 2.00 (US 1.88 Germany 1.38 UK 1.9) it then may even begin to shrink.

Re:From TFA

[OakDragon]

Nature occasionally killed nearly every living thing on the planet.

Occasionally? It happens all the time. It's happening right now.

:)

Re:From TFA

[kheldan]

I've never even heard of this metric. Is this based on real science or climate activism?

I'm not sure what sort of 'science' anyone can expect from the World Wrestling Federation, aren't those guys a bunch of two-bit actors? *drum hit*



In all seriousness, I don't see how anyone can say how much 'resources' the entire human race uses in a year. If their purpose is to point out how unsustainable the human race is in general then they're stating the obvious, and the human race as a whole won't know when we're out of resources until it's too late anyway. In any event it won't happen in what's left of my lifetime, as if I could do anything substantial about it anyway, so I don't even see why I shoudl give a damn. The human race either pulls itself out of it's current downward spiral or it doesn't; lots of people way above my pay grade have orders of magnitude more to do with that than I.

Re:From TFA

[umafuckit]

[citation needed]

You see population growth is rapidly decelerating, albeit still positive. Hence our impact is likely to be decelerating too.

Population is one factor, the other is per capita emissions and resource usage. It's the latter that's increasing. A common theme in the news recently has been the alarm expressed by scientists at the rapidity with which changes are happening. Nobody is saying that things are progressing at lower than expected rates. They're all shocked at how fast it's hitting home. People can make cute comments about Malthus to imply that there's nothing to worry about, but that's not what we're seeing. Just because Malthus wasn't right in his lifetime, that doesn't make him wrong. Malthus died in 1834: that's really not that long ago.

Re:From TFA

[Fragnet]

It's based on a steaming pile of turd excreted from the backside of an NGO wanting publicity for more government funding.

Re:From TFA

[PopeRatzo]

If you don't think AGW is real, why don't you explain where all the energy being absorbed by CO2 in the atmosphere is going

I'm in Houston right now, and it feels like it's all coming right here. Got damn, it's hot out there today.

Re:From TFA

[Sir_Eptishous]

From my standpoint the earth is here to be consumed as we see fit

So when you make a statement like that, it really matters not what kind of language or semantics one would use, as you have already made up your mind about it.

You know who I don't trust?
Those who say things like "the earth is here to be consumed as we see fit", because, obviously that just smacks of a bronze/iron age monotheistic world view that has no place in the 21st century.

Re:From TFA

[AmiMoJo]

People are living longer though. At the current rate we are looking at reaching a stable population of around 10-11 billion, with most of the growth in Africa. It's sustainable if we manage it well, but that really requires the developed nations to step up and make sure everyone can enjoy their standard of living without the associated environmental damage.

Re:From TFA

[demonlapin]

Um, water? It falls from the sky. In pretty large quantities.

Of course, I don't live in a semi-desert. Yeah, we get some bad years, but there's more than enough in the ground to make up for those. My city water supply is from surface water. I've never even been asked not to wash my car or water my lawn, because there's no point: all I'm doing is slowing its passage and making it a bit dirty in the process. The first doesn't matter much, and the second is why we have sewage treatment.

Re: From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously the Earth cools by radiating energy (or it would've burned up looong ago), but the whole point of greenhouse gases is that they reduce this. Expecting to double the CO2 in our atmosphere and not see significant warming as this radiative cooling is blocked, would require some new & undiscovered "magical" heat sink to soak up all that excess energy without increasing temperatures.

This lays it all out pretty clearly.

Re: From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Good for you. 2.5 billion people aren't so lucky.

Climate change just makes this worse, and we've already seen the results.

Re:From TFA

[zlives]

actually no!!! all that proves that it is a constant positive and not accelerating.
though i do see population as being the biggest burden on the planet.

Re:From TFA

[losfromla]

I agree with you and wanted to point out some other facts:
The 2/3 of it that is covered with water we've already done a fantastic job of making a terrible environment for its inhabitants, so much so that it is quite unsafe to eat their flesh in any significant amounts. We're rapidly draining aquifers for feedlot animals and to grow corn in the desert that is most of Texas. Pollution of oceans and rivers via use of industrial fertilizers and pesticides is probably what will make us extinct, along with a lot of the higher mammals. So, lets hear it for technology: "Yay technology!"
Not every region of the planet is able to produce food like California is, where abundant vegetables are grown year around. Try growing anything other than mushrooms in a hothouse in the middle and eastern parts of the US during winter.

Re:From TFA

[kylemonger]

Really, it's "we can pay for it now, or someone else can pay for it later." That's why most of "we" is satisfied to keep doing what we are doing. Speed up the warming processes and maybe interest will perk up. And indeed peat bogs burning, along with breakdown of methane clathrates in melted permafrost might just provide that burst of speed. Of course "we" would have to be convinced of the dangers posed by these events and "we" are to a surprising extent willingfully ignorant and stubborn.

Re:From TFA

[liquid_schwartz]

Our cities on the coastlines (where we've historically loved building cities) will get flooded.

You had me at LA gets flooded. Makes me want to buy a hummer right now. That applies to both the city in California as well as the state in the South.

Re:From TFA

[Austerity Empowers]

obviously that just smacks of a bronze/iron age monotheistic world view that has no place in the 21st century.

You you would replace monotheism with some form of nature god or new spiritualism that can't be defined but we all feel, far out brother? It's all shit. I do not care much about inanimate objects beyond their value to me. I have absolutely no idea where you are going with this argument, but it sounds like we should get our drums and form a circle.

We exist, we have the capacity and intellect to put our resources to work, and we should do it. We should not consume more than we can sustain, that is where I draw the line, and I do believe on the preponderance of evidence that we are presently consuming more than we can sustain. But I can also understand where people who read articles like this have the strong urge to vomit, and reject even what few actual facts may be presented herein.

Re:From TFA

[Alomex]

The calculations are correct. The planet can support 3 billion people living at a high (US level) standard of living.

No, that is also incorrect. Once population stops growing and/or starts falling as it is predicted, per person use of resources goes down dramatically too. No new buildings, roads or school, with people inheriting property from their grandparents, ranging from a house, to a car, to a microwave oven, to a cutlery set and a frying pan.

Consumption goes scarily down. Scarily in the sense that the economy will have a hard time handling it, but incredibly good in terms of the environment.

Re:From TFA

[Koby77]

Yeah just like how The Population Bomb determined that the peak population will be in 1990 before it starts dwindling due to food shortages and massive starvation. And also how Peak Oil will happen in the year 2000 and the price of oil will never go down after that.

Oooops, both of those alarmist theories didn't happen. It turns out that it DOES matter if the numbers and science are real, otherwise it's just scare tactics designed to convince people to assign more political power to those who don't deserve it. AGW didn't turn out to be as dire as predicted and is failing to sufficiently scare voters, so now the alarmists want to ignore the outcomes and move on to the next crisis -- YEARLY RESOURCE ALLOTMENT?

Re: From TFA

[hackwrench]

Part of the problem is that we don't really think in terms beyond acceleration and another is that acceleration of one term is speed in another. So if the speed at which our growth is happening is decelerating, the nex level down is rate of consumption and the previous metric contributes to whether the speed of this one is accelerating or decelerating or holding constant. And an unmentioned mwtric is rate of production. We aren't "using up" water; we are turning usable water into water that is harder to make usable again. And that is metric the environmental people aren't thinking in terms of, for whatever reason.

Re: From TFA

[hackwrench]

Not if we breed so that the next generation is half the height. Or so goes an old short story in which is the line, "I want my muscles to be tiny and tight!"

Re:From TFA

[msevior]

"Just because Malthus wasn't right in his lifetime, that doesn't make him wrong. Malthus died in 1834: that's really not that long ago."

Malthus observed a historical phenomena that kept the population of Earth more-or-less constant since the agricultral revolution which in its time increased the population of the Earth by 2-3 orders of magnitude. Since the Industrial revolution and the era of economic growth all such predictions have been dramatically WRONG. Every time time humans appear to run up against a resource limitation, we've found ways around it. The most recent has been crude oil. Who talks about Peak-Oil now?

Our main problem now is that Fossil fuels are too cheap to give up without a global carbon tax.

Re: From TFA

[hackwrench]

The safety of eating animals from that 2/3 varies from place to place and there are areas where the wildlife has pretty much died out. But that's beside the real issue which is that there is still much untapped capacity for farming seafood and lab-grown food and bioengineering, all of which if done properly which there is the potential to do, will keep us in beer, skittles and other foodstuffs for quite some time.

Re: From TFA

[hackwrench]

Oh, so they use that word for third derivative, TIL. But still everybody seems to be mangling and disregarding units all over the place. Won't somebody please consider the poor and relevant units without which our talks are meaningless?

Re: From TFA

[hackwrench]

One of us has his models wrong. In my model, energy from the sun travels through the CO2 one way bet is coverted to a form of heat that is then trapped by the CO2, not absorbed by it, like the windshield, though I admit in both cases some absorbtion takes place.

Re: From TFA

[hackwrench]

China is building freaking islands! I may not entirely approve of the auspices under which China is building them, but China is building islands! Go, China!

Re: From TFA

[hackwrench]

And the way that progress, technological or otherwise, happens, it will be cheaper to pay for it later. I just paid $99 for computing power that would have cost national budgets not that long ago.

Re: From TFA

[hackwrench]

Are you counting the kids who die at various ages against the ones that make it to maturity to have kids of their own or actually be productive and have no kids? Units, people and how they factor into the overall big picture, please!

Re: From TFA

[hackwrench]

I think people are also confusing heat, a portion of which can be harnessed to do work with entropic waste heat, none of which can, if the physics are correct and we are dealing with a "closed" system.

Re: From TFA

[hackwrench]

Whenever someone complains about AGW they seem to be confusing it with entropic waste heat which should start being brought up every time the talk turns negative which is usually around the time it get brought up. More effective than denying AGW.

Re: From TFA

[hackwrench]

I coud scrap all my computing machines and live off my cell phone... Wait, how is that standard of living defined again?8

Re:From TFA

[Sabriel]

... Unless of course a small but influential group should decide that they can profit by making someone else pay for the war.

Re:From TFA

[Maow]

We already have empirical data from previous periods with high greenhouse gas numbers, and we know what happened: plant life flourished, died, got buried, turned into coal, and served as a carbon sink. Anyone arguing that this won't happen again is making an extraordinary claim that demands extraordinary proof.

It's not entirely clear that coal can be replenished at anywhere near the scale we've been using it.

This interesting bit of info on coal's formation came to my attention not long ago:

Trees invented lignin -- the tough fibrous component in bark -- millions of years before bacteria and fungi invented ways to break down and digest lignin. (Even today, lignin takes a long time to break down and only a few organisms can digest it, but there are enough that it gets recycled eventually.) That meant for millions of years, trees that died didn't rot and get recycled as they do today; instead, they just piled up and eventually got buried and became coal.

Better source:

Now a new genomic analysis suggests why Earth significantly slowed its coal-making processes roughly 300 million years ago—mushrooms evolved the ability to break down lignin.

Re:From TFA

[jandersen]

It will always be cheaper to make water than go to war for it.

That is probably too simplistic a view. Those who will be worst hit by drought tend to be in the poorest nations; they will choose to migrate away from those areas, creating a refugee crisis. The refugees will quite naturally want to go to the places where life is a lot better - ie. mostly Europe and the US. We will say "we can't receive so many, because that will affect our lavish lifestyles", and thus, the war is on. Whichever way we go about it, we will all have to make sacrificaes in the end.

Re:From TFA

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

Yes the CO2 sink works better today.

Higher levels of CO2 also means plants and trees grow more and can thus take up more CO2.
Human activity - using wood for houses and furniture - also act as a CO2 sink.

Sadly we let out more CO2 then we store so the atmosphere CO2 levels has been increasing for along time.

However that also is a hidden challenge since if we manage to get CO2 pollution under control, the sink will become less good and we gonna need to lower our CO2 footprint even further down.

Re:From TFA

[geantvert]

The first chart on https://ourworldindata.org/wor... shows both the growth rate and the population.

What I find interesting is that the growth rate was at its maximum 2.1% in the 60's and it is now at 1.2%.

During the same time the world population went from 4 billions to 7 billions which means that the raw growth went from 4e9*0.021 = +84 millions/year to 7e9*0.012 = +84 millions/year. So the raw growth was basically constant during the last 50 years.

The current expectation is that the growth rate will continue to decrease and that the population will eventually reach a maximum around 9 billions but be aware that a decreasing growth rate is not a sufficient condition for that. For instance, 1/2+1/3+1/4+1/5+.... is well known example of an infinite sum with a decreasing growth rate. Similarly, 1/2+1/4+/1/8+1/16+... is not an infinite sum (it tends to 1) even though its growth rate remains strictly positive.

Re:From TFA

[jandersen]

Is this based on real science or climate activism?

I think it is real - the reason I say this is because I think you can follow the logic and the methods: we have good data on most of these things, we have fairly reliable models for the productivity of ecosystems etc. What they do is basically to extrapolate from this - I suppose you can call that bit "activism", in as much as it is at best a very good, educated guess.

The ecological footprint is a relatively new concept; we have only recently got enough detail about supply chains etc to have a good idea about what it actually 'costs' in ecological terms to produce what we consume. The ecological footprint tries to sum up not just how much money the farmer spent on feed etc per egg produced, but tries to follow the chain all the way: what went into the farmer being there to produce the egg (ie. his consumption), to build the farm, transport the feedstuffs, produce the feeds, etc etc etc.If fishmeal was a components, how muc fish per gram, if soy beans, how much water was used, how much fuel for tractors, how much energy and raw materials was used to produce the fertiliser, insecticides etc, how many insects were killed or not produced, how many birds etc were not able to produce offspring as a consequence of less prey being available etc. Complicated, but the only limitation is the availability of data. This is clearly "real science", not "climate activism"; it is science, not because it is accurate or necessarily "right", but because it uses the scientific method - a method that over time automatically corrects any mistakes made.

Re:From TFA

[Maritz]

In your world, your car goes backwards when you brake. Because you're a fucking moron.

Re: From TFA

[spyfrog]

No. It is not sustainable. All these people saying that the problem is with the "first world" and that the "third world" doesn't have so much ecological impact disregard the simple fact that the people in the third world won't accept there current level of life forever. They will increase their consumption and their ecological footprint. Earth can't sustain more than three billion people living in comfort. There is only two ways - reduce human population to three billion or ALL humans will be forced to live on a third world level.

Re:From TFA

[silentcoder]

Your mistake is the assumption that resource consumption growth is directly (and exclusively) correlated with population growth. There's no grounds for this assumption. Even some of the countries with negative population growth rates are seeing accelerating rates of resource usage. The biggest resource consuming nations are NOT the largest ones in population by any stretch and certainly haven't been for at least 200 years (if ever).

In fact the pattern seems to be that groups with limited resources are MORE likely to have expanding populations because among the resources they have limited access to are those that would reduce population growth - like education and contraception.

So it's perfectly possible for global population growth to be even negative and STILL see an acceleration in resource consumption. That doesn't mean that overpopulation can't be a problem - but it does mean it's a lot more complicated than you imagine. More people do require more resources, but the biggest problem with resource consumption is people USING far more resources than they require - which is much more likely when there are fewer people.

Re:From TFA

[silentcoder]

Europe got a ton of money from the USA for what was, comparatively, a tiny rebuilding effort.

And mind you, world war 2 killed a shitload of people - we generally try to AVOID things that kill shitloads of people.

So who do you think will provide the ton of money to every country on earth for your supposed post-climate-change renewal idea ?

Re:From TFA

[Alomex]

So it's perfectly possible for global population growth to be even negative and STILL see an acceleration in resource consumption.

Yes it is possible, but contrary to what you say we do seem to see a reduction in resource usage when this happens. As you said, it doesn't necessarily has to be this way, but it does seem to be the case.

Resource consumption will increase in poor countries as they catch up to the west in living standards. Meantiime advanced economies will see a reduction in population and resource consumption of unprecedented proportions. Some economists argue this is the basis of Japan's never ending recession: depressed internal demand.

Re:From TFA

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Because people forget Sam Kinison:

YOU LIVE IN A DESERT!! UNDERSTAND THAT? YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT!! NOTHING GROWS HERE! NOTHING'S GONNA GROW HERE! Come here, you see this? This is sand. You know what it's gonna be 100 years from now? IT'S GONNA BE SAND!! YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT!

Re:From TFA

[Wycliffe]

It's you who are mistaken. As long as the first-order derivative of the population growth rate is a positive number, then it is correct to say that population growth is 'accelerating.'

Yes but we are at least starting to slow down. Using the car example if you were accelerating by 10 miles/hour every hour and are now accelerating by only 5 miles/hour every hour then your rate of acceleration is slowing. More importantly, if it is consistently falling then we can also calculate when we cross over and start to decelerate.

Re:From TFA

[silentcoder]

>As you said, it doesn't necessarily has to be this way, but it does seem to be the case.

How do you figure ? Right now - it would require two earths worth of resources for everybody to live like an average American does. Everybody living like the average Dane isn't far behind either.

>Resource consumption will increase in poor countries as they catch up to the west in living standards
Arguably true - but you first have to accept the assumption that they can and will do so.

>Meantiime advanced economies will see a reduction in population and resource consumption of unprecedented proportions
Based on what ? There seems to be no grounds for this claim. So far advanced economies have seen resource consumption per person increase much faster than the rate of population growth (and indeed continue even when the latter began to decline or even became negative).
Efficiency increases can't do that - there are upper limits to efficiency and even then not all resources can be renewed so for many that can only postpone the inevitable. It's not even reasonable to assume that all of them have viable alternatives. Even where viable alternatives exist developed countries have proven to be extremely reticent about adopting them - even for cases where it means replacing a finite resource with an infinitely renewable one (just look at the energy sector) and even when there is a huge demand for changing from other major downsides to the current resource of choice.

>Some economists argue this is the basis of Japan's never ending recession: depressed internal demand.
Some economists also argue that the Austrian Business Cycle Theory is not complete and utter bullshit. The majority of economists believe that Japan's recession is the result of a welfare system that worked way too well and made everybody live a high standard life up to a ripe old age - which has led to an aging population where an ever smaller working-age sector has to work ever harder to supply a much larger unproductive sector. A problem which in Japan (as in Europe) is exacerbated by significant resistance to the only cure for this situation - the same cure the US used until the early 20th century: mass immigration. When your own population is aging, your only rapid source of lots of productive young people is to get them from places where there are currently lots of them who are not able to be productive as their own economies have too many of them.

Re:From TFA

[Curunir_wolf]

Nice twist of words jackass. Growth is growth. There are more people being born than dying. Until that changes growth is accelerating. The percentages may have changed, but that doesn't over rule that there are more people alive today than there were 50 years ago and there will be even more people in 50 years. Go back to school.

You're still wrong. Even if the population is still growing, efficiency in the use of resources (as well as reuse and recycling) is also growing. You failed to take that into account at all.

Re:From TFA

[Curunir_wolf]

First off, volcanos are dwarfed by the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses that people pump into the atmosphere annually.

Current volcanos. That is, active ones in recent times. Historically, volcanos emitted a LOT more CO2 than fossil fuels are creating today.

Re:From TFA

[Curunir_wolf]

Plants are evolved in a given CO2 level and their response to rapid changes is highly unpredictable - it isn't all good for plants.

Gee, maybe someone should do some experiments to find out. You know, use some actual science. Then we can make predictions that actually work, rather than extrapolations of something so complex and untestable it's easier just to spout a bunch of alarmist propaganda.

TL;DR plants not only grow faster and produce more biomass in higher CO2 concentrations, they are also more efficient in the use of water.

Re:From TFA

[jeremyp]

The derivative of population growth is not a positive number though.

Population growth is slowing which means that, at some point, it will be zero and the population will stabilise. The problem is that, if the story is correct, the population is already too big. The other problem is that, maybe it won't stop growing before it is too late.

Re:From TFA

[umafuckit]

Every time time humans appear to run up against a resource limitation, we've found ways around it.

This has so far been the case in our recent history. It is not the case in general. There are numerous examples of past civilizations that have declined and disintegrated due to resource depletion. Jared Diamond's "Collapse" provides a great overview of the more prominent examples and is soberly written. The only difference between the past and modern times is that our civilization is now global and we've been able to use technology to stretch resources. That doesn't mean that our behavior is sustainable or that we'll be able to continue coming up with solutions indefinitely to allow for ever-greater resource use. At some point we have to scale back. That will happen either by choice or be forced upon us.

Re:From TFA

[silentcoder]

You call a flagrant propaganda site like that 'actual science' ?!?!?!

Funny how you did not link a peer reviewed article in a journal... oh right, because to make such a claim they would need to experiment with all sorts of plants in all sorts of ecosystems, not just cherrypick a few which will give the result they want to advocate.

Or that complete and utter bullshit claim they make on another page that the rate of CO2 in the atmosphere has remained constant or even declined...

At least get something that isn't debunked with links to numerous peer reviewed studies on the 'common claims' page skepticalscience.com.

You know how you can tell an actual science education site from a bullshit propaganda site ? They link to REAL science published in REAL journals after being reviewed by other REAL scientists to back up their claims. They don't go do bullshit backyard experiments and claim groundbreaking results that somehow failed to get published in any journals and somehow miraculously did NOT get them the Nobel prize nomination which is absolutely guaranteed for anybody who could prove something THAT outrageous to contemporary science.

Just one little example of the kind of things you are flat-out ignoring. Oceanic algae tend to proliferate in a high CO2 environment... and that is NOT a good thing, because they overgrow so much that it destroys the entire ecosystem (including blocking out sunlight to lower-living plants like kelp) and can cause massive die-outs and even extinction level events. Funny how your article made no mention - or even included any aquatic plants in their testing. Funny how it didn't factor in what happens when CO2 hits the ocean at all. It's hardly rocket science. When CO2 is disolved in water it produces carbolic acid. Which is why the ocean's acidity has been going up so much. That's a very bad thing for all sorts of creatures (inclduing most ocean plants).
Oh and ocean plants are big deal, since they produce more than 80% of the world's oxygen supply.

Re:From TFA

[Alomex]

So far advanced economies have seen resource consumption per person increase much faster than the rate of population growth (and indeed continue even when the latter began to decline or even became negative).

Look at fosil fuel consumption in Germany. It has declined 25% over the last several decades. This is far more than what is attributable to renewables/nuclear power. A similar story holds for Japan and France.

Re:From TFA

[Curunir_wolf]

You call a flagrant propaganda site like that 'actual science' ?!?!?!

No, you stupid dipwad - maybe you could try the links to the peer-reviewed studies they have DIRECT LINKS to instead of throwing out ad hominems because you don't like the messenger.

Funny how you did not link a peer reviewed article in a journal...

Total reading comprehension on the part of dipwad silentcoder. The page I linked has more than ten links to peer reviewed articles, plus references. Wow silentcoder sure is making himself look like an utter fool today.

At least get something that isn't debunked with links to numerous peer reviewed studies on the 'common claims' page skepticalscience.com.

Okay, sorry, now I realize you're just trolling. Claiming the my link is "flagrant propaganda" so you reference a well-known source of flagrant propaganda! LOL! You had me going there for a minute.

HAHAHAHA! Well played.

Re:From TFA

[Maxo-Texas]

Replacement rate is slightly higher than 2.0 children due to death prior to reproduction.

For example, a female has 2 children. one is killed in a car accident at the age of 19 without having had children.

Re:From TFA

[dristoph]

Since when has a trivial concern like cost ever stopped us from going to war if we wanted to?

Re:From TFA

[Maxo-Texas]

Latest UN projections are now up to 12 billions.

The projected maximum has been increasing my entire lifetime.

I have a theory about that.

Picture humans as a bacteria or virus.

Now picture a modern developed lifestyle as penicillin. It has a strong selective pressure- reducing reproduction from 6-12 children to roughly 2 children.

No picture any part of the population is immune for any reason to that selective pressure. It could be "stupid about birth control when horny" which I've personally witnessed leading to 4-5 children instead of 2. It could be "religious beliefs for having more children". It could be "birth control fails slightly more often even when used properly". It could be being less distracted by modern conveniences.

Over time, that group of people who are immune to the selective pressure of modern lifestyle will become a larger part of the overall population and cause the anticipated maximum to rise.

Anyway, I think that's why it isn't going to top out as they expect.

On the flip side tho- you do have Calhoun's rat universe experiments which showed overpopulation alone can lead to complete collapse and extinction even when provided with plentiful food and water.

Re: From TFA

[losfromla]

I'm going to assume that you are going for lolz with your entire comment. So I'll respond appropriately LOL, ROFLMAO, etc...
More detailed:
Farming seafood "right" requires industrial inputs to produce the mostly grain that is fed to that poor unfortunate and unhealty to eat farm raised seafood.
Lab-grown food: see above, same answer.
Bioengineering: well, it's taking real effort not to devolve to getting personal here but, I'll go with the old standby "Bioengineering in the wild, what could go wrong?!"
Beer, skittles: This is where I realized you were just going for lolz, beer and skittles as foodstuff, haha, you are too funny! But we're still in trouble and unfortunately dragging down all the other species that had the misfortune to occupy the earth during our tiny window of existence/desecration of the planet.

Re:From TFA

[Maxo-Texas]

Recycling is well under 100% efficient. It's a good thing but we lose a significant amount of usable material each pass thru the recycling part of the system.

The book "Limits to Growth" includes recycling in it's models.

Conservation and less consumption per person are our best bet but it really only changes to day we hit the limits not the fact that we will hit the limits. We can't sustain our current population level much less the potential for 12 billion by 2100 now projected by the UN.

We now use more of many nonrenewable resources each year than we did during all of last century.

Re:From TFA

[david_thornley]

Also, even if we buy into "as we see fit", we have to consider what we see fit. We've only got one Earth. No matter how badly we trash it, it will be by far the most hospitable body in the Solar System. People born on Earth are pretty much stuck here: even if we get practical ways to move lots of people to other planets and have them thrive there, we're not going to get that many people off-planet. Therefore, it's a good idea not to trash the place too much.

Re: From TFA

[hackwrench]

The last bit was for lulz and I don't doubt there are significant risks in any feat of engineering but when something goes wrong you just need to be prepared in advance to go in and fix it. I believve we will eventually engineer the entire world, solar system and beyond until we run across another civilization doing the same thing. They say our sun will last how long? Somehow I doubt it will last even half that before mankind comes to harvest it for all the resources it is hoarding. You hear that Sun? Mankind is coming for you!

Re: From TFA

[losfromla]

Yeah, I am quite sure you are right about the significant risks parts, lots of modern experience attests to that fact.
The part that worries me is

when something goes wrong you just need to be prepared in advance to go in and fix it.

this is the part we've not proven so good at witness:
Iraq Invasion/Occupation,
Deepwater horizon disaster,
Exon Valdez,
Dead zones in ocean (including Gulf of Mexico) from industrial farming pollution/run-off,
DDT,
GMO and other unnaturally hybridized grains (damage is seen in the incidences of diabetes and heart disease).

So, you'll have to excuse my lacking the same faith in science that you apparently hold zealously on to.

Do you really think we're going to achieve becoming a Type II civilization given the current destructive rate of our very existence? I say we annihilate ourselves before we even become a Type I.
I am sure the sun trembles in fear at your mighty challenge. ;-)

Re: From TFA

[hackwrench]

My faith is not in "science" per se, but in the ability of the entire system, be it the universe, multiverse, God posessing, whatever to come through and prevail. I don't accept that God created the universe the way some do, but I do believe in a god-something.

Re: From TFA

[losfromla]

That's fine. You can believe in whatever you want to believe in. I look at the evidence and assume we'll do more of the same. More SNAFUs, more FUBARs, more destruction and depredation. Yes, things are better than they've ever been for many many people, but, this has not come without a cost, a cost that is usually externalized and then ignored. If your god-something gave us freedom, then you have to believe that he/she/it/they/us gave us enough freedom/rope to hang ourselves with.

Re: From TFA

[hackwrench]

I look at the evidence and the inescapable fact is that despite all the mistakes that we have made we are still here and in such numbers as to make this exchange a thing. You have been looking at the failures without looking at the successes.

Re:From TFA

[silentcoder]

Fossil fuel is hardly the only resource. And in fact, renewables would have played a large part in that one considering just how heavily Germany invested in it. The rest can be attributed to efficiency improvements (but those have an upper limit as well).

But you can't get a measure if you aren't measuring the US - the single largest per person resource consumer on earth.

Re:From TFA

[multi io]

Recycling is well under 100% efficient. It's a good thing but we lose a significant amount of usable material each pass thru the recycling part of the system.

The book "Limits to Growth" includes recycling in it's models.

Conservation and less consumption per person are our best bet but it really only changes to day we hit the limits not the fact that we will hit the limits. We can't sustain our current population level much less the potential for 12 billion by 2100 now projected by the UN.

We now use more of many nonrenewable resources each year than we did during all of last century.

Well, it largely depends (ultimately) on the energy you put into the recycling process. Energy is the only true "nonrenewable resource", due to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. But there's enough of it. What we really have to do is develop technologies and policies to produce large amounts of clean energy. If we don't do that, then even half the current global population number will be unsustainable in the long term, especially if more countries strive to attain western standards of living. If we do do it, then 12 billion or even 20 billion people can be managed. Since forbidding people to consume and prosper didn't even work under communism, it certainly won't in liberal democracies, so our options are quite clear AFAICS.

Re:From TFA

[Maxo-Texas]

Just remember that even clean energy ends up as waste heat that must be radiated out into space. Any excess and independent of AGW, the earth starts to heat.

If energy per person continues to grow at the same rate it has since the 1600s, in less than 500 years the earth is over 212 degrees. Energy per person is another limit to growth. And the more people we have, the lower that limit. If we have 20 billion instead of 5 billion, the ultimate cap on energy per person is going to be 1/4th as much.

Re:From TFA

[RockDoctor]

The problem is that, if the story is correct, the population is already too big.

Since significant environmental effects have been visible since the 1950s, then the point of maximum manageable population was probably passed in the 1920s or 1930s.

Corollary : 3 to 5 gigadeaths (difference between death count and birth count) are necessary before a "sustainable" population is achieved. I'll be optimistic and guess that improvements in technology could reduce that to one third of the headline value - to between 1.0 and 1.6 gigadeaths. For comparison, World War Two was around 0.04 gigadeaths.

The other problem is that, maybe it won't stop growing before it is too late.

Define "too late". Too late for people to continue living a western life style? Too late for human beings to survive with a pre-metals technology (unless they're really good at recycling)? Too late for non-microscopic life to survive on Earth?

Re:From TFA

[RockDoctor]

The current expectation is that the growth rate will continue to decrease and that the population will eventually reach a maximum around 9 billions

The last time that I checked the UN's demographic predictions, they were looking at a mean of more like 10 billion with a variation of about 2 billion.

So, checking the UN 2015 predictions (published April 2016), at 2100, the 80% confidence interval is between 10.1 billion (and just levelled off) and 12.5 billion (increasing at ~0.05 billion/year) ; the 95% confidence interval is 9.7 billion (and very slightly declining) and 13.8 billion (increasing at ~0.08 billion/year). That's the summary of 60-odd projections under different models (changes in birth rates and death rates with time, by region). Follow links from the cited page for more data than you ever really wanted.

It's a couple of years since I looked up the numbers. So I think they're still increasing the population estimates year on year - which probably reflects changing assumptions about death rates against age, and maybe increasing numbers of old-age mothers (~34+).

Re:From TFA

[multi io]

Just remember that even clean energy ends up as waste heat that must be radiated out into space. Any excess and independent of AGW, the earth starts to heat.

If energy per person continues to grow at the same rate it has since the 1600s, in less than 500 years the earth is over 212 degrees. Energy per person is another limit to growth. And the more people we have, the lower that limit. If we have 20 billion instead of 5 billion, the ultimate cap on energy per person is going to be 1/4th as much.

Yeah, we're a few orders of magnitude away from that. It's T~P^(1/4), T=300K, and the solar power input is currently about 10,000 times the entire human energy production. So a tenfold increase of our power production would lead to about 0.06 Kelvins of temperature rise from direct energy to heat conversion. Or to put it another way, the current AGW temperature increase (~1K) corresponds to the heat equivalent of about 140 times our current energy production. So yes, we won't be able to achieve the same relative growth in energy production over the coming 500 years as we did in the past 500 years, at least as long as we stay on this planet and don't venture into outer space. But that's not really all that relevant for solving the energy and resource consumption problems at hand.

Re:From TFA

[Maxo-Texas]

My underlying point is that higher population means tighter limits to growth. Faster non-renewable resource depletion (including pesticides and fertilizers but also any other non-renewable), the amount of water each person can use per year (month, day), faster soil exhaustion, etc.

Some we can solve with technology (we've been doing good with food so far but the result has been a feedback loop to higher than expected population) but the faster and larger our population grows, the less time we have to discover that technology.

The most likely scenario is not a smooth curve to steady state but an over shoot and then a decline to a lower stable state. Which is a very dry polite way of saying mass death and potentially war. And we have cataclysmic weapons now which we lacked during the prior world wars.

Re:From TFA

[DarthVain]

While I'm critical of the "science" used to come to their conclusion, I don't find it all that unreasonable to assume given current consumption of resources, and population growth, why resource consumption wouldn't also grow at a similar rate.

The whole yearly allotment thing is a bunch of mental flossing. They seem to be trying to do everything at the macro level and make some general assumptions. They might be better off simply looking at many multiple individual cases around the world, coming up with a formula based on that as a predictor, and then correlating it simply to population growth. Even that is going to ignore a significant amount of factors which can impact the results such as distribution and waste, etc... All this on data you are also assuming is correct.

Re:From TFA

[toddestan]

If you had done this study in the late 1700s, they would have said that we were at the limits for how many people the world could support, too.

Actually, probably the opposite. Back then things like the forests of North America were considered so vast that the supply of lumber and wood would be inexhaustible. Which it was, until the forests were all chopped down, of course.

Not getting it done

[Anonymous Coward]

So, all those solar panels, windmills and Tesla's are not getting much accomplished when you take the big picture view...

Re:Not getting it done

[Anonymous Coward]

SWAT is the answer to all out problems. Solar, Wind, And Tesla!

The Earth is used up

[Empiric]

Well, we had a good run.

Or, maybe like the entire history of mankind and economics, "used up" means there's demand for more production, or alternative production.

More CO2 is resulting in more foliage. Seems nature has it's own kind of "balancing market".

I'll be looking for a better arbitrary wordplay metric of impending doom.

Re:The Earth is used up

[dywolf]

we are putting out more than nature is able to consume or sequester.
the added foliage isn't the only effect: in the presence of increased CO2 or heat (or both) many plants become more disease/pest prone.
others, particularly many staple crops, produce less of the food stuffs.
or it becomes toxic.

Re:The Earth is used up

[scatbomb]

It is true that CO2 stimulates plant growth, if you isolate other factors. The problem is that we are deforesting our planet, so the net change in plant biomass is negative. Furthermore, the excess CO2 in the atmosphere is about 37% of the existing 3E12 tons of CO2 in the atmosphere, or 1.13E12 tons of excess CO2 from human activities. A single km^2 of rainforest contains about 356 tons of biomass (wikipedia), so assuming it's all carbon (it's not) we'd need another 3.2E9 km^2 of rainforest to consume all of the excess CO2 in the air. The earth's surface area (including oceans) is only 5E8 km^2. So we'd need 6.2 earth surface areas of Amazon rainforest to sequester all of the extra CO2 in the air. You see, the carbon stores were saved up from fossilization over millions and millions of years and we've attempted to release all of them into the atmosphere in about 100 years. The earth cannot "bounce back" from such a rapid change, it will take millions and millions of years for geological processes to bring carbon back into the Earth's crust. Hope that you see now this is a major problem that won't be solved by sitting back and watching. My sources are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and https://micpohling.wordpress.c... feel free to check my math.

Re: The Earth is used up

[backslashdot]

We aren't using up any of those resources. We can get it back using clean energy such as solar or nuclear. For example we can get back fresh water by desalination of sea water or filtration/purification of dirty water. I am not sure what the problem is. Build more electricity production facilities (solar, nuclear) and we won't run out of anything. We have enough solar or nuclear potential to last millions of years. A 100km by 100km solar array in the Sahara could produce enough electrify for all of earth's power needs. Of course we can have smaller facilities more evenly distributed. My point is that we aren't running out of anything the water molecules are still here.

Re:The Earth is used up

[denzacar]

The earth cannot "bounce back" from such a rapid change, it will take millions and millions of years for geological processes to bring carbon back into the Earth's crust.

Who said it needs to go into the crust? You know what really likes carbon on this planet? Everything.

Also, while tree-sequestered carbon can stay in that form for millennia after the tree is cut - carbon sequestered into plastic takes millions of years to become CO2 again.
And we could just suck it out of the air and pour it into a hole in the ground.
It's just that the trees are far more efficient and a LOT cheaper to produce.

Also, forget rainforests. It's plankton that's making most of the air.

Re: The Earth is used up

[thinkwaitfast]

You are off by five orders of magnitude. But I suppose you know that. 100km^2 would at best give 3.3TWh/year.

2012 electricity generation was 22,668TWh

Re:The Earth is used up

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, the water tables in the largest food producing regions are completely stable and aren't dropping at an increasing rate.

Re:The Earth is used up

[Maow]

More CO2 is resulting in more foliage. Seems nature has it's own kind of "balancing market".

Well, plants need water just like they need CO2, but obviously too much water will not promote growth.

Same with CO2 - not necessarily a 100% positive thing.

3. Too high a concentration of CO2 causes a reduction of photosynthesis in certain of plants. There is also evidence from the past of major damage to a wide variety of plants species from a sudden rise in CO2 (See illustrations below). Higher concentrations of CO2 also reduce the nutritional quality of some staples, such as wheat.

4. As is confirmed by long-term experiments, plants with exhorbitant supplies of CO2 run up against limited availability of other nutrients. These long term projects show that while some plants exhibit a brief and promising burst of growth upon initial exposure to C02, effects such as the "nitrogen plateau" soon truncate this benefit

6. Likely the worst problem is that increasing CO2 will increase temperatures throughout the Earth. This will make deserts and other types of dry land grow. While deserts increase in size, other eco-zones, whether tropical, forest or grassland will try to migrate towards the poles. Unfortunately it does not follow that soil conditions will necessarily favor their growth even at optimum temperatures.

Re: The Earth is used up

[backslashdot]

Huh? Wrong. Are you blind or something?!?

LOOK AT THE RESULT OF THE CALCULATION CAREFULLY.

The power produced is 3.333×10^9 kW (kilowatts) .. THAT IS NOT 3.3 TWh .. that is 33,333 TWh. You pasted the unit conversion factor dummy!!

The first link states that is 1.4 × average global power consumption ( 2.3×10^12 W ).

Re: The Earth is used up

[spyfrog]

"We" are not deforesting. Mostly third world nations are. Many first world countries actually have a big increase in forest areal.

Re: The Earth is used up

[HeckRuler]

"We" are not deforesting. Mostly third world nations are.

Wow. They must have a lot of excess lumber.

Maybe they sell it or something?

I wonder who buys that.

Re: The Earth is used up

[Namarrgon]

This is a global issue. The globe is losing about 3% per year, net, of its forest area - particularly in the tropics. Luckily this is slowing.

Re: The Earth is used up

[No Longer an AC]

"We" are not deforesting. Mostly third world nations are.

Wow. They must have a lot of excess lumber.

Maybe they sell it or something?

I wonder who buys that.

Probably nobody buys the wood that burns up in the Amazon.

Brazil does have a timber industry but that contributes to increased fires. Slash and burn farming techniques also contribute to the problem.

From an interesting article on fire in the Amazon:

Those stories draw attention to how difficult it is to escape the cycle of accidental fire. Logging causes fire; drought causes fire; fire causes fire. With the increasing threat of fire, landholders are reluctant to use their land for anything that might be wiped out by fire or to spend their money on fire prevention measures on their own property when they are just as threatened by their neighbor’s land management decisions.

From Forest to Field: How Fire is Transforming the Amazon

Re:The Earth is used up

[scatbomb]

I was simply replying to the parent's idea that increased foliage uptake might be enough to combat the extra CO2. It's not.

Re: The Earth is used up

[scatbomb]

Yeah, shame on them for cutting down forests to harvest wood, grow food, and raise cattle that people in rich countries buy. Of course, first world countries have also leveled entire forests, but it's OK because currently the net change is positive. Also there is no such thing as "outsourcing" of environmental problems from the first world to the third world.

We ate up all the food...?

[nikkipolya]

How can we end up eating all the food meant for the whole year? Who is giving the food for credit then? The Fed? Are the plants doing "Quantitative Easing" of food then?

Re:We ate up all the food...?

[DesertNomad]

Don't know about you, but I went through my year's supply of frozen Hot Pockets and Snickers bars back in late July. We're doomed, I say, doomed.

Re:We ate up all the food...?

[bluefoxlucid]

The planet can provide for 68-135 million hunter-gatherer humans in optimal conditions. Intensive farming raised that to hundreds of millions; GMO, fertilization, and pesticides raised that to billions. These strategies reduced the expended working time required to sustain a population's food supply (some economists argue that agriculture INCREASED work, but allowed humans to live in large-population communities which would otherwise need to forage over intractably-large areas and expend excess energy walking long distances; I argue that the work required to support a large-population community by forage is much higher than the work required to support a large-population community by agriculture, and thus that said economists are comparing dissimilar things).

The truth is we're talking about technology. Cupping water out of a freshwater stream with your hands is technology for acquisition of water. Carrying that water to the village in buckets is technology. Pumping technology to pull freshwater reserves from underground is technology. Reservoirs and water treatment plants are technology. Desalinization is technology. At a hands-in-river level of technology, you can't support a strong, highly-productive society, and you *definitely* can't get enough water for intensive agriculture and a large population.

Re: From Facebook?

[frootcakeuk]

I'm sure I saw this on my news feed last week sometime as some meme. I miss /.

Activism

[Sycraft-fu]

You can tell from the fact that the are talking about "using up" a year's allotment of clean air. Uhhhh... No. Air doesn't work like that. While we can, and do, pollute the air we don't "use it up." What's more in terms of breathable air, pollutants in it are a local problem, not global. So in given areas there is heavy pollution that causes the air to be poor quality for breathing, however the amount is very small compared to the total amount on the planet and it doesn't cause a decrease in quality globally.

This is another activist group. They aren't doing science, they are pushing a point of view. Science on CO2 is about it causing more thermal retention, leading to a long term increase in average temperatures. It isn't about "using up" a certain amount in a year.

Re:Activism

[Anonymous Coward]

You can tell from the fact that the are talking about "using up" a year's allotment of clean air. Uhhhh... No. Air doesn't work like that. While we can, and do, pollute the air we don't "use it up."

But there are natural systems that purify/replenish air, right? And we're not so fucking stupid that we can't estimate the rate at which we're polluting and weigh it against our estimates for how these natural systems replenish it, right?

Estimations aren't "doing science" but for the last goddamn time they are useful to policy makers.

Here let me turn your own stupidity on yourself: You can tell from the fact that the are talking about "doing science". Uhhhh ... No, we can't run multiple instances of Earth to perform a double blind study on Earth with one Earth having people and the other Earth not having people. Therefore no falsifiable statements can be made about the two Earths. So no, it's not "doing science" to say anything about our situation.

Grow up.

Re:Activism

[Anon-Admin]

Yes, the trees, grass, plants, and plankton breath in CO2 and release O2, converting CO2 to O2 and bonding the Carbon into carbohydrates.

There are more trees on the planet earth than there are stars in the milkyway galaxy.

So the real question is, how much co2 does a tree sequester? (48lbs a year)
How many trees are there? 3,000,000,000,000

I guess you can do the math on that one. ;)

Re:Activism

[dywolf]

the ability of the planet to convert of sequester CO2 from the atmosphere is actually a fairly well known concept.
and the rate of emission of CO2 is similarly well known.
comparing the two is fairly simple and straightforward, and yes, scientific.

their phrasing ("using up") is weak, but the concept is communicated.

as far as causing a decrease in global quality, it does, that's why the global CO2 avg ppm is now above 400, even if that is still almost unnoticeable in human physiologies at that concentration.

Re:Activism

[Ichijo]

in terms of breathable air, pollutants in it are a local problem, not global.

False.

Re:Activism

[dgatwood]

It isn't that simple. The growth rate of plant life depends on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. More CO2 leads to faster plant growth. Within a certain band (which we're likely well inside), the planet corrects for variations in levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. That's why we don't have a global extinction event every time a volcano erupts and belches methane into the atmosphere.

Re:Activism

[Stephan Schulz]

Yes, the trees, grass, plants, and plankton breath in CO2 and release O2, converting CO2 to O2 and bonding the Carbon into carbohydrates.

There are more trees on the planet earth than there are stars in the milkyway galaxy.

So the real question is, how much co2 does a tree sequester? (48lbs a year)

48 pounds is the highest estimate for the biggest tree under the best circumstances. And even that CO2 is only permanently sequestered if the tree is neither burned nor allowed to rot - otherwise it just turns back into CO2.

How many trees are there? 3,000,000,000,000

Also the highest available estimate.

I guess you can do the math on that one. ;)

I could, but why should I? We can directly measure CO2 in the atmosphere, and we do. We know that CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing at slightly more than 2ppm/year at the moment, and has increased from about 280 ppm to about 400ppm over the last 150 years. We also know that this is about half of the CO2 that we emit into the atmosphere, while the other half is currently still being taken up by natural sinks (mostly the ocean), which have serious limits.

Re:Activism

[archer, the]

What's wrong with saying we've "used up" a year's allotment of clear air? Wouldn't the allotment just be the amount of O2 generated by plant life consuming CO2? If humanity somehow raised CO2 levels to 70,000 ppm, breathing would become difficult. Yes, climate change would become seriously bad long before that. However, it would still be nice to try to live using only what the planet can recycle, until we can figure out how to cleanly recycle more if needed.

Re:Activism

[drinkypoo]

Within a certain band (which we're likely well inside), the planet corrects for variations in levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. That's why we don't have a global extinction event every time a volcano erupts and belches methane into the atmosphere.

Not this again. Humans produce orders of magnitude more CO2 than volcanism. That's why we're currently experiencing CO2 levels unprecedented on a human timescale.

Re:Activism

[denzacar]

And even that CO2 is only permanently sequestered if the tree is neither burned nor allowed to rot - otherwise it just turns back into CO2.

Ever been to a museum? Ever saw an old piece of wood in there?

CO2 sequestered by trees takes CENTURIES to return to CO2 again - unless you burn it.
Even left to rot it will take decades. Ever seen an old tree stump, sticking out of the ground, all covered in moss and mushrooms?
Decades and decades.

Re:Activism

[AmiMoJo]

They aren't talking about literally depleting a fixed supply of clean air, they mean that we used up the "allowance" of pollutants that the atmosphere can reasonably absorb before it starts to cause serious problems. TFS doesn't explain it very well, but they are saying that to be sustainable we would need to stretch what we used, in terms of natural resources, this year up to Monday out over the whole year. CO2 emissions, oil, minerals, dumping shit in the sea etc.

I don't know why there isn't a link to the actual web site that explains everything. It's got full citations for all the numbers and statements too.

Re:Activism

[ChrisMaple]

And even that CO2 is only permanently sequestered if the tree is neither burned nor allowed to rot

Such as by building large wooden houses, which the left considers a waste of resources - unless Al Gore or a Clinton owns hem.

Re:Activism

[Stephan Schulz]

And even that CO2 is only permanently sequestered if the tree is neither burned nor allowed to rot - otherwise it just turns back into CO2.

Ever been to a museum? Ever saw an old piece of wood in there?

CO2 sequestered by trees takes CENTURIES to return to CO2 again - unless you burn it.

Yes, under carefully controlled conditions, as in a museum, wood is stable for a long time. Most wood is, however, not in a museum.

Even left to rot it will take decades. Ever seen an old tree stump, sticking out of the ground, all covered in moss and mushrooms? Decades and decades.

A decade is not a very long period of time in the context of the climate system. And, of course, in a mature forrest, rotting and growth are in balance. Otherwise, where would all that extra wood go? There are very limited conditions under which plant mass is permanently sequestered.

Re:Activism

[denzacar]

Most wood is, however, not in a museum.

Indeed, most of it actually lives to be alive for hundreds of years. Even thousands.

A decade is not a very long period of time in the context of the climate system.

You are being deliberately obtuse.

If a decade (and I didn't say a decade) is not a very long time in the context of the climate system, then how come there are measurable and visible changes in the climate during last decades?
How come there are visible and measurable changes in the ozone layer - for the better?
Besides - I was talking of wood being explicitly left to the elements and the ecosystem to reclaim it. I.e. Left to "rot".

On the other hand, while "decades and decades" which may take a piece of wood to rot naturally and decompose back to carbon (which basically never happens as it gets used up by the ecosystem centuries before that can happen) - a bullshit time period or physical state like "permanently" doesn't even exist.
If it did - we wouldn't be able to use fossil fuels in the first place. Carbon would have been "permanently sequestered".

Also, you should really go to a museum.
Primarily to look up how long have we actually had museums AND ways to preserve stuff in them.
Then look up all the wooden artifacts found. All they needed to stay preserved for millennia was a thin layer of dirt or water to keep all those aerobic bacteria out.
Hell, we got processed wood from over 4000 years ago.

Sequestering carbon is a piece of cake. Literally. We make cakes out of sequestered carbon.
If we wanted to, we could sequester it all into the ground. We don't want to. Nor do we need to.
We're keeping it sequestered in mobile form. As humans and food for humans. And you need to grab a lot of carbon from the air to feed 7.4 billion humans (and growing) and all our pets and food.
And when we're done with using our carbon we put it under ground. Or we reclaim it and use it to trap more carbon.
Or we put it in a large pile and cover it with more stuff until no air can get to it. Just like we always did.

Re:Activism

[Stephan Schulz]

Most wood is, however, not in a museum.

Indeed, most of it actually lives to be alive for hundreds of years. Even thousands.

If we are picking nits, most of the wood in living trees is not alive.

A decade is not a very long period of time in the context of the climate system.

You are being deliberately obtuse.

If a decade (and I didn't say a decade) is not a very long time in the context of the climate system, then how come there are measurable and visible changes in the climate during last decades? How come there are visible and measurable changes in the ozone layer - for the better?

We typically define climate via the long-term average, about 30 years, to filter out short-tern random fluctuations, but also cycles like the 11/22 year sunspot cycle. The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was signed 1987, nearly exactly 30 years ago. 1996, 20 years ago, emission of controlled substances was not to exceed zero. And we can now tentatively detect the fist signs of a slow recovery of the ozone layer. And that is for a very simple, direct process that only involves the atmosphere, with few feedbacks.

Besides - I was talking of wood being explicitly left to the elements and the ecosystem to reclaim it. I.e. Left to "rot".

On the other hand, while "decades and decades" which may take a piece of wood to rot naturally and decompose back to carbon (which basically never happens as it gets used up by the ecosystem centuries before that can happen) - a bullshit time period or physical state like "permanently" doesn't even exist.

No, wood does of course not decay to "carbon". It mostly gets consumed by other organisms, which use it to produce energy, resulting in, surprise, CO2, either directly or via the route of methane, also a greenhouse gas, and one that relatively quickly decays into CO2 in the atmosphere, thus completing one particular path through the Carbon cycle.

Much of the carbon in the coal we now dig up has been sequestered during the Carboniferous, over a period of 60 million years, ending 290 million years ago. It has thus been sequestered for a around 300 million years. Carbon in most crude oil reservoirs has been sequestered for 100 million years or more. On human and civilisation time scales, that is essentially forever. A few decades is not forever.

If it did - we wouldn't be able to use fossil fuels in the first place. Carbon would have been "permanently sequestered".

Also, you should really go to a museum. Primarily to look up how long have we actually had museums AND ways to preserve stuff in them. Then look up all the wooden artifacts found. All they needed to stay preserved for millennia was a thin layer of dirt or water to keep all those aerobic bacteria out. Hell, we got processed wood from over 4000 years ago.

And yet, the number of wooden artefacts from the past is so low that we actually do put them in a museum to preserve them. Nearly all of them have decomposed, one way or the other, over time. One poster above cited an estimate of 3 trillion living trees, or 375 trees per human. Older estimates are around 400 billion, or 50 trees per human in the ecosphere. How much wooden artefacts does the average human have? I'd be surprised if my furniture makes up one decent-sized tree. The amount of wood in artefacts that are preserved (usually for a small while) is miniscule. We have no ancient triere, although Herodotus tells us there were hund

Re:Activism

[david_thornley]

Science doesn't necessarily require experimentation. Astronomy doesn't. We can't make stars in the lab and observe them for a few billion years, and yet by observation and doing science we know a lot about stellar formation and what happens to them over time.

Science needs to have objective observations under varying circumstances. Experiments with control groups are very efficient at generating these observations, but they aren't the only way.

Re:Activism

[david_thornley]

You know how we can figure out whether the planet corrects for greenhouse gas output? We can measure the concentration of gasses in the air. If the concentration of CO2 goes up steadily, it's a pretty good bet that we're beyond the ability of the planet to correct. It has been. We don't need to theorize to figure out whether we're putting more CO2 in the atmosphere than the correction mechanisms can deal with. We can observe that we had 280ppm CO2 in 1850 and we're up to 400m now. We can measure how fast the CO2 concentration is going up.

Asteroids etc

[myowntrueself]

Soon we will have to start mining asteroids. Then the other planets. Then we'll have to start harvesting the dust between the planets.

Unless we develop technology to go through our Alderson point and survive the exit from the other Aldeson point thats in the atmosphere of a star.

Re:Asteroids etc

[myowntrueself]

Yeah but then we just wind up spending a shitload of resources keeping those god damned moties sequestered within their own solar system.

You got it the wrong way around; WE are the Moties!

Re:Asteroids etc

[myowntrueself]

Soon we will have to start mining asteroids. Then the other planets. Then we'll have to start harvesting the dust between the planets.

Unless we develop technology to go through our Alderson point and survive the exit from the other Aldeson point thats in the atmosphere of a star.

So what exactly will be gained going through your fictional Alderson point? Self immolation?

Thats why I said technology to ... survive the exit. Us Moties have to expand y'know!

LOL what?

[ShooterNeo]

So, uh, what about all the minerals that are on the ocean floor and deeper than current technology makes it economical to mine? Are those resources "used up"?

Eventually we'll run out of oil and gas to burn, but last I checked we have a crapton of unused land for solar and if we really had to there's more thorium and breedable uranium than we know what to do with...

The ecosystem may take a hit from all this increasing activity, sure. But do humans even need it to remain viable as a species? Just how close are we to being able to grow all our food with genetic engineering, and to make all our medicine with genetically engineered organisms in vats?

I'm under the impression that this is basically possible today, it's just a matter of how much money is available to develop the strains you want. Various FUD about genetic engineering has severely curtailed the interest in it.

Re:LOL what?

[Maxo-Texas]

The cost of mining materials disolved in the ocean has been estimated to be over 10,000 per ounce with current technology.

The key bit is we are consuming many resources like this.

Magnesium, zinc, chromium (stainless steel), manganese, molybdenum, iron, coal, etc. etc. etc.

Recycling is less to much less effective than 100%.

The real key was holding a much lower population. We didn't do that. It's already too late.

Re:LOL what?

[ShooterNeo]

I'd like to make a reasoned rebuttal...but you don't have a clue what you're talking about. You're an idiot and should feel bad.

Re:LOL what?

[scatbomb]

The real problem with fossil fuels is not that we might run out - the problem is that we WON'T run out until long after causing some nearly irreversible changes to our climate. We'll have >2C increase in temperature locked-in after using only 40% of our proven reserves. The results of this temperature increase are totally unknown, but very likely to be bad.

Required reading - limits to growth

[Maxo-Texas]

http://collections.dartmouth.e...

Some of the items are scary spot on (like the amount of carbon dioxide we would see in the atmosphere).

A bunch of MIT types calculated that based on total assets in the earth (not just available to extract), we would hit several "limits to growth" between 2020 and 2100.

For example: We used as much chromium in 2014 as we did from 1900 to 2000 combined.

here's a summary of the 30 year update.
http://www.unice.fr/sg/resourc...

Many of their projections are following.
Food is a little higher- but so is population.

Here's the unavoidable situation they said we would hit.

Using so many resources that we overshoot the carrying capacity of the earth and then permanently lower it as a result. So if 6 billion were what it could carry for a very long time, by going to 12 billion, we might reduce the capacity to 3 billion.

And it projects a very rapid population reduction. 70 years to fall from 12 billion back to 1950s level populations.

The projection is we'll run low on multiple indusrial metals at the same time and prices of those metals will skyrocket.

---

Now the fun bit. It's too late to do anything about it. We passed the point of no return back in the 1990s. It's a genuine "bend over and kiss your ass goodbye" situation.

And the good news... Many of us will be dead by 2040-2050 when it starts to get nasty tho we may see some signs as early as 2035 (I'll be 74 then-- my most likely lifespan is to 2038).

Re:Required reading - limits to growth

[almitydave]

Now the fun bit. It's too late to do anything about it. We passed the point of no return back in the 1990s. It's a genuine "bend over and kiss your ass goodbye" situation.

And the good news... Many of us will be dead by 2040-2050 when it starts to get nasty tho we may see some signs as early as 2035 (I'll be 74 then-- my most likely lifespan is to 2038).

Don't be so pessimistic - at the rate medical science is advancing, you'll be able to live well into the apocalypse!

Re:Required reading - limits to growth

[dgatwood]

IMO, they're probably wrong, because they're ignoring fungibility. As the cost of the rarer metals goes up, other materials will take their place, and the net impact on society as a whole will be minimal.

In the grand scheme of things, you really only need a couple of metals to get things done—iron and copper. Fortunately, these are also two of the most plentiful metals in Earth's crust, so we're not going to run out of either one for the foreseeable future, though the cost of extracting copper may go up as the quality of ore deposits decreases.

As for the others, right now, people use chromium because of stainless steel, but powder coats or sealants could serve the same purpose in many situations. We might run low on lithium, which is a problem for batteries, but we're also on the cusp of getting supercapacitor capacity to the point where many uses of lithium will no longer be needed, making that largely moot in the long term. And so on. And we use metal for many things that we could use plastics for, too (either oil-based or plant-based).

Like I said, fungibility.

Re:Required reading - limits to growth

[Maxo-Texas]

At current rates of growth copper was protected to run out in roughly the same time frame. Copper is at record prices (adjusted for inflation) and about three times the inflation adjusted price it was from 1978 to 2000. It's too expensive to make pennies from any more and thieves pull copper wiring out of houses now due to it's value.

So we'll definitely need an inexpensive replacement for copper. Iron looks like it's good til past 2300 so we are fine on raw iron.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying we'll ever "run out" of anything. Just that demand for the amount annually mined will make it unusably expensive in practical terms. If copper cost as much as gold, we'd still have copper but we couldn't use it to wire houses any more. Copper doesn't have to get as expensive as gold to be practically unusable. If copper were $45 per pound, we'd probably be unable to use it for many current applications.

I get your point on fungibility. It's a good one. The fundamental underlying point is that human population continues to grow. The UN recently raised the potential maximum population by 2100 to 12 billion people. Standards of living (and resource consumption) are rising rapidly combined with population increase. It's not sustainable.

As the parent article and other articles said, our usage is at all time highs. Other articles have shown we are using as much per year as we used to use per century of many major non-renewable resources.

It's clearly unsustainable. We'll figure out new products or we'll hit the wall.

And there are many walls to hit. If it's not metals, it might be pesticides, or fertilizers, or pollution.

Re:Required reading - limits to growth

[suss]

With a bit of luck, you'll just end up in 1970 again after the last bit of 2038 flips over...

Re:Required reading - limits to growth

[Maxo-Texas]

I think you missed my point.

In 1978, based on models they predicted CO2 would be around 380ppm by 2000. That prediction turned out to be pretty accurate. Giving credence to their other predictions. They only predicted heating island effects and made no global warming predictions.

They predicted consumption rates for non-renewable resources based on population increases and standard of living increases and those consumption predictions have also been reasonably accurate.

Based on the theoretical amount of available non-renewable resources (not proven resources), they predict we will hit limits to population growth based on in ability to increase production of those non-renewable resources and then a decline in our ability to increase production at a reasonable cost.

It could be the non-renewable resources we use to make fertilizers or pesticides (if that happens, food becomes more expensive).

It could be the less well known metals used in many industrial processes.

It could be usable water.

As the population grows, every non-renewable resource will simultaneously come under much higher pressure each year than it faced each century only a couple decades earlier.

.

Re:Required reading - limits to growth

[HeckRuler]

For example: We used as much chromium in 2014 as we did from 1900 to 2000 combined.

...Don't look at ME! I use Firefox.

Re:virus

[Alwin Henseler]

A better reference:

The Matrix - virus scene

Our yearly allotment?

[wkwilley2]

Sounds like it's time to cut out all the welfare.

Re: By whose budget?

[The Grim Reefer]

nature abhors a vacuum. something will rise to take their place. always.

The funny thing about that is it's not always for the better, and almost never ends up the way you expected it to.

Re: By whose budget?

[sexconker]

However, you don't get to decide who lives and who dies. No person has that right.

Except for the 1% who run our health care system, government, armies, housing market, agriculture corporations, pharmaceutical research divisions...

Re:How's this work exactly?

[Fwipp]

This just looks at renewable resources (or those renewable within a timely manner), so oil/coal/gas is not included.

FTA

[doug141]

Fishery depletion.

Re:FTA

[ChrisMaple]

No risk. TFA is plenty fishy.

Funny how "climate activism" has become code for

[Rujiel]

giving a shit at all about the suatainability of your species and its planet.

Re:How's this work exactly?

[eyenot]

You almost seem to be mixing these two statements up , or assuming that they are mutually homogeneous.

Re:By whose budget?

[The Grim Reefer]

A plague that wipes out 30-60% of the human race (if it could start with the "1%ers", that'd be great

Do you take home over $34K after taxes? If so, congratulations, you're a 1%er on this planet. Your plague would wipe out most first world countries and be very bad for many second world countries as well. But don't' worry, the third world countries should have a much easier time getting their hands on the unguarded weapons in those countries. Just think how much better the world will be once some warlord in Somalia gets a couple of nukes. At least that'll lower the population even more. Plus all of the additional particulates in the air will help cool the planet too.

Darkening the skies as well!

[Lumpy]

All that solar is making the sun dimmer! Oh and all that wind power is slowing the rotation of the earth! Senator Joe Bartan (R) said it was true!

Re:Darkening the skies as well!

[slew]

All that solar is making the sun dimmer! Oh and all that wind power is slowing the rotation of the earth! Senator Joe Bartan (R) said it was true!

On the other hand, the three-gorges dam in china apparently slowed the earth's rotation by about 0.06 microseconds, and shifted the pole position by about two centimeters.

Of course if we extrapolate this data and we continue building dams at the current rate, we will probably cause catastrophic damage to the earth in the next million years (unless we go extinct by then). Maybe we should stop building dams now before it is too late.

FWIW, what Mr. Barton said was actually this...

I am going to read a paragraph which is, if true, very ironic. And this is from Dr. Apt’s paper, and I quote: ‘Wind energy is a finite resource. At large scale, slowing down the wind by using its energy to turn turbines has environmental consequences. A group of researchers at Princeton University found that wind farms may change the mixing of air near the surface, drying the soil near the site. At planetary scales, David Keith, who was then at Carnegie Mellon, and coworkers found that if wind supplied 10 percent of expected global electricity demand in 2100 the resulting change in the earth’s atmospheric energy might cause some regions of the world to experience temperature change of approximately 1 degree Centigrade.’

This Dr. Apt's paper was poorly paraphrasing this 2013 Harvard report which quotes research that was partially funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (a country with major petroleum reserves and skin in the game)...

It's easy to blame politicians for ignoring science (as if many of them were scientists qualified to analyse data), but it is often the Universities that tend to confuse issues. Hey we've got researchers from Princeton, Haarvaard, and CMU saying something ironic *if-it-were-true*. Then confirmation bias sets in (happens on both sides of the aisle). The spin cycle kicks in to make your political enemies look like idiots to please your audience. Rinse, repeat (god forbid don't lather, think of the environment).

Re:Funny how "climate activism" has become code fo

[PopeRatzo]

The smartest man in the world said,

"The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."

and,

"Snowing in Texas and Louisiana, record setting freezing temperatures throughout the country and beyond. Global warming is an expensive hoax!"

and,

"Give me clean, beautiful and healthy air - not the same old climate change (global warming) bullshit! I am tired of hearing this nonsense."

Depends on what the meaning of IS is

[WillAffleckUW]

If we're using up resources to replace inefficient machines that use more resources (fossil fuels) with longer lasting, more efficient, better machines that use less resources per year (energy, materials, clean up) then it's ok to use them up "faster" this year.

Which, to be frank, we are doing. We literally are building solar, wind, hydro, biofuel systems worldwide at record rates. This means we use fewer resources, since most solar, wind, and hydro last far longer.

If we dispose of these materials instead of reusing and recycling them, then it is a bit of a problem, however.

I literally cut my electric bill in half by buying more efficient appliances (fridge,stove,fridge,washer,dryer) - all of these use far less energy and one uses far less water and detergents. I also bought six solar panels. So, when I bought them I "used more resources" that year. Very true.

But this year I use half the resources. Also very true.

Capiche?

Re:Depends on what the meaning of IS is

[eyenot]

Your argument requires that the audience is capable of comprehending rate-of-change (first differential) of whatever it is that they're paying attention to (resource consumption in this case.)

This is the problem with most scientific, economic, and political issues in the "first world": barely anybody can comprehend much more than translation along a single dimension -- measurement along one line.

The "smart people" tend to be those who can analyze two influences together at once in a simply two-dimensional relationship, at best as one function of two independent variables.

And we have to acknowledge that those people aren't really all that fucking smart. I used to take the "power" of that level of intelligence for granted -- back in high school when I was simply average at algebra. Since becoming average (and sometimes above-average) at several levels of calculus, linear programming, and differential equations (basically since completing my minor in mathematics) I no longer take that power for granted. I instead renegotiate my view of the world to see that most people are fucking ignoramuses (ignoramii?) who simply can't comprehend something as vitally important to understanding a system as change-of-rate-of-change.

Third derivatives? Beyond hope. The jerks will never, ever understand jerk.

So you can always just take whatever explaina-thon you're about to attempt, privately reduce it to differential terms for your own quiet analysis, and if any second or third order derivatives appear in the 'splainin' then you best just give up because the vast majority -- far more, far beyond (below?) merely 'the average' -- can barely get a grip on first derivatives, and especially cannot do so if there is more than one independent variable to the function.

Re:Using up water?

[WillAffleckUW]

Most countries and regions are running out of clean water. Only some countries and regions have sufficient supplies that are recharged. Many are using stored waters from glaciers (which are not being replaced due to global warming) and aquifers (underground water storage) that were filled over tens or hundreds of thousands of years.

And, no, you can't steal ours. We have fusion powered lasers to stop your zeppelins.

We use small fraction of solar flux

[laughingskeptic]

The sun shines a continuous 175x10^15 watts on the planet, by this number we are undershooting by a few orders of magnitude. If 7.125x10^9 people each used a continuous 24.5 megawatts we could manage to eventually consume all the earths energy resources for people and nothing but people.

Work Ethic

[scarboni888]

Well then I guess the planet had better buck up and start producing faster then, shant it?

Yeah, I believe it fucking shall.

Get to work slacker planet: I got mountains of disposable shiite to buy and discard!

Is that why?

[Virtucon]

My Campbell's soup cans are getting smaller?

If Water is Scarce

[wasteoid]

If water is scarce enough, people will war over it.

Re:If Water is Scarce

[nightfire-unique]

Seventy-one percent of the Earth is covered by water. We simply lack the technology to change that statistic.

Water cannot be "scarce" on Earth.

It is expensive to desalinate water. However, war is many orders of magnitude more expensive.

Think of it this way: $0.25USD per 1,000L of desalinated water vs $2.50USD per 1,000L of ground or lake water taken by force.

There may be minor skirmishes over specific rivers, but there will never be war because it is not economically advantageous.

Re:If Water is Scarce

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of it this way: $0.25USD per 1,000L of desalinated water vs $2.50USD per 1,000L of ground or lake water taken by force.

Your numbers are way off. Nobody can desalinate water for $0.25 per 1000 litres.

Re:If Water is Scarce

[msevior]

I just ran the numbers of Melbourne's Desalination plant (http://www.melbournewater.com.au/desalination). As far as I can tell, taking account of the interest on the capital, it costs around $4.67 AUD per 1000 L of water. (http://www.kimwells.com.au/deception-on-water-desalination-costs/)

If you neglect the capital cost, it's $0.66 AUD per 1000 L of water.

Re:If Water is Scarce

[Gavagai80]

Minor skirmishes quickly become wars. There are a lot fewer rational actors out there who will back down than there are patriotic jingoists who won't rest until the skirmish is avenged no matter how many it kills.

Re:If Water is Scarce

[Namarrgon]

No, but Israel's desalination plants are operating at under $0.40 / 1000L. Costs have come down a lot.

Re:If Water is Scarce

[nightfire-unique]

Your'e right .. I am (today, in most places). But the point still stands.

It's mostly people lacking a scientific education screaming "we're running out of water" and misunderstanding the actual nature of the problem - some areas have limited access to naturally fresh water, and will need extensive recycling and desalination programs.

But when you put it that way, it's so much less dramatic.

Re:If Water is Scarce

[thegarbz]

Providing we have energy, water will never be scarce. For a good look at this see all the lush farming that happens in the deserts of the UAE. Next to every farm is a desal plant. Providing energy is cheap enough water will be cheap enough.

We will go to war over energy long before we go to war over water.

Re:If Water is Scarce

[cellocgw]

But for some strange reason marine life near the exhaust pipes dislike their suddenly twice-as-salty water.

Re:If Water is Scarce

[david_thornley]

Some places have been running out of water, such as California for a few years. Desalinization plants tend to be at sea level, and there may be water shortages at considerably higher elevations. Moving water uphill costs money and energy, which has to be taken into account.

Re:If Water is Scarce

[Namarrgon]

Actually a lot of the excess brine is being used to help refill the Dead Sea.

Re:If Water is Scarce

[Bender0x7D1]

If you neglect the capital cost, it's $0.66 AUD per 1000 L of water.

However, you can't neglect the capital cost. Plants need to be built, maintained and replaced. They may go lower (per unit of water) the longer the plant runs, but they can't be neglected.

Re:If Water is Scarce

[toddestan]

The other thing to consider is that bringing a desalination plant online takes time. If you need the water now, as in people are dying of thirst, suddenly taking it by force may not seem as crazy.

Re:sooooo, okay, I am a physicist

[zlives]

you misspelled mythology

Time to invest

[confused one]

Well, it sounds like it's time to invest in asteroid mining. Yep. There's gold in them there rocks.

Re:Who cares

[thinkwaitfast]

When I read that statistic this morning on another site, it was 360,000/140,000.

It's worse than I feared.

Don't worry, be happy

[UncleWilly]

A large comet or asteroid will likely be the game changer. For the truly paranoid there's always Zombies, AI and angry aliens thrown into the mix.

Re:Don't worry, be happy

[Areyoukiddingme]

For the truly paranoid there's always Zombies, AI and angry aliens thrown into the mix.

Why you always gotta bring up Trump in every story?

*ba-dum* *tsssh*

Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week.

humanity's largest blunder

[nbritton]

I think one of humanity's largest blunders will be not creating products that can be easily reused or recycled. There is going to come a point in time where there are no more resources that can be extracted out of the ground and all of our existing resources will randomly scattered in high entropy landfills with no easy way to extract them.

Aluminum should never be thrown in the trash, it takes 95% more energy to make new aluminum using the bayer process then it does to recycle existing aluminum. It also take less energy to recycle glass then it does to make new glass.

Re:humanity's largest blunder

[HeckRuler]

hmmm. I think you might be a bit off.

Realize that electronic waste has more gold in it than gold ore. We're more knowledgeable about refining gold out of rock than breaking down old motherboards into copper and gold, but that's just some R&D away. It's not an insurmountable problem by far.

As for scattering our resources, landfills are more like concentrated masses of previously unusable resources. (With a lot of crap that still isn't usable in there). Imagine a landfill that existed prior to aluminium recycling. It'd be a gold-mine (ba-dum-tsh)!

But yeah, we should recycle aluminium whenever we can. It recycles great.

People don't see how important this is

[Velox_SwiftFox]

But they will now that we've run out of air and water and food and there won't be any more until next year.

Arithmetic, Population and Energy

[allquixotic]

This is an interesting point. However, when most people say "population growth", what they really mean is GEOMETRIC growth -- meaning that the population is growing by an exponential function.

The late, great Professor Al Bartlett's arguments in Arithmetic, Population and Energy -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?... -- are assuming that population grows at an exponential rate, not something slower.

If it could be shown that the population was growing linearly, or even polynomially, over a long period of time, we would have significantly less cause for concern. However, if the population growth's fastest term is still exponential, it doesn't matter whether it's "decelerating", we still have the problem.

Consider three different population growth functions where each whole number of `x` is 1 year:

C = 100000 (starting pool of people = 100,000)

L(x) = 1000x + C // Linear growth

Q(x) = 400x^2 + C // Quadratic growth

E(x) = C*(1 + 0.0113)^x // Exponential growth -- let's set r = 0.0113, the current estimated world population growth rate, 1.13% per year

So if x = 1 (10 years from now):

L(1) = 1000 + 100000 = 101000.

Q(1) = 400 + 100000 = 100400.

E(1) = 100000 * 1.0113 = 101130.

So far these are relatively close, but let's look at 50 years...

x = 50:

L(50) = 50000 + 100000 = 150000.

Q(50) = 1000000 + 100000 = 1,100,000.

E(50) = 100000 * (1.0113)^50 = 175388.

Quadratic jumps way ahead here, but even though I set a fairly aggressive coefficient for the quadratic, the exponential wins out in the end...

Let's say x = 500...

L(500) = 500000 + 100000 = 600000.

Q(500) = 100,000,000 + 100000 = 100,100,000.

E(500) = 100000 * (1.0113)^500 = 27,542,516.

Nope, quadratic still wins.

x = 1000?

L(1000) = 1,000,000 + 100000 = 1,100,000.

Q(1000) = 400,000,000 + 100000 = 400,100,000.

E(1000) = 100000 * (1.0113)^1000 = 7,585,902,222.

So yeah, after just 1000 years of a very slow exponential growth, it completely trounces the extremely fast-growing quadratic.

So we need to stop looking at population figures in terms of derivatives and acceleration in the traditional sense, because historically the growth has always best been described by an exponential function, not by a polynomial. Unless we have somehow fundamentally changed our ways to stop the exponential growth, everything Al Bartlett says in his video is 100% true, even if the rate, r, in the growth function is decreasing (hint: it's not decreasing fast enough to matter).

Re:By whose budget?

[HeckRuler]

Who decides what resources we're allowed to use?

Right now we mostly use a system of allowances based on your contributions to society as determined by society. They can only give you as much as they have. The placeholder for "resources" is called "money". The system is called "capitalism". It's not pure capitalism as the top actors get to decide the money->resources exchange, as well as the typical taxation process to keep the infrastructure up and running. Oh, and keeping the jackboots off our necks. (Quite a bit goes towards that last bit actually.) Furthermore, there are some resources that are restricted; you can't build a condo in Yellowstone and you can't play with nukes. And the EPA is attempting to account for externalizes that you inflict upon others without paying for it by the way of pollution laws and carbon tax.

It's certainly not perfect, but it's better than other attempts. At least it's not a controlled economy with price fixing.

Focus on things that can be objectively measured like global average temperature, emissions and aerosols in the atmosphere, and things like that.

Sounds great.

Let's add how many resources have been consumed. I'm pretty sure they know how many barrels of oil have been pumped and burned. Or how much lumber has been made.

And then let's add them all together for an overall metric of "How we doing?"

Re:Funny how "climate activism" has become code fo

[Rujiel]

re: the second quote--using examples of record freezing in some areas as am AGW argument--despite far more examples of heat records broken elsewhere, and on average for the world--sounds pretty fucking dumb to me. It was rebranded to "climate change" to alleviate confusion for people like this.

Re:Funny how "climate activism" has become code fo

[david_thornley]

Global warming means the surface of the planet is overall warming up. It causes climate change, which can have freaky local effects, including cooling things down because we're mucking with how heat is transferred around the planetary surface.

COOL! Another impossibility...

[martinfb]

The USA has been impossibly over budget for decades - the national debt for $$$! Now we can ad outliving our time!

Re: Freedom

[hackwrench]

I forgot to add that I believe that all of this including the god-thing are all machines. I have also looked at mistakes and find it hardly likely that the mistakes were due to freedom, but due to overrestraint. The big mistake that I see and make the biggest attempt to rail against and draw attention to currently is the position of the Hobbesian/Hamiltonians who generally believe in the absolute power of the state to limit the freedom of man.