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Post by davidm on Apr 27, 2012 20:17:01 GMT 9.5
I take it as a given that compound interest above inflation growth is intimately linked to the idea of perpetual economic growth. Both in terms of an accurate reading of human history and best economic thinking and unavoidable ecological insights the continuation of this practice appears to be environmentally impossible. Not only do we have the wisdom of antiquity with its hostility to usury but the giants of economic thought like Adam Smith, Malthus, John Stuart Mills, and Keynes entertained an ultimate no growth scenario. Modern economic analysis indeed sees no growth both as desirable and achievable. Clive Thompson offers his perspective. www.utne.com/Politics/Nothing-Grows-Forever-Endless-Growth-Economy.aspxNote from viewing preview: The quote function appears to severely diminish the font size. Edit. I have now inserted a size=2 font function within the quotes. I have no idea why those little <?> thingies inserted themselves over night.
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Post by Anon on Apr 27, 2012 23:03:06 GMT 9.5
The limit depends on the technology you've got access to, higher technology allows you to support more people (and more people can support higher technology).
I would also have to say that limiting yourself to the Earth is short-sighted though even if you limit yourself to Earth the limit is quite a bit beyond where we are now. We know that nuclear can supply enough energy for more than 10 billion people to live at higher per capita energy consumption than is typical of today's first world and genetically modified crops (among other technologies) should allow us to get crop yields high enough to feed everyone.
Continued growth is only impossible if you insist on remaining a single planet civilisation with no significant space presence. At some time in the next trillion years we may discover that there is an ultimate limit to growth but it is not going to be reached this century (just because we are running out of fossil fuels does not mean Malthus was right, to show that you'd need to show that there's nothing currently available or around the corner to replace it).
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Post by davidm on Apr 28, 2012 1:51:19 GMT 9.5
I suspect by the end of this century if we make it we will have considerably less people than now. We will either voluntarily cut back or be culled, probably a bit of both. Whatever the technology or energy sources at hand there are simply resource limits, fresh water being one. The outer space angle strikes me as a fantasy or at least way beyond anything we can exploit in any meaningful future. Malthus was right in principle, just not on some specifics.
Some more from the article.
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Post by Anon on Apr 28, 2012 3:12:52 GMT 9.5
I suspect by the end of this century if we make it we will have considerably less people than now. We will either voluntarily cut back or be culled, probably a bit of both. How many less people? Whatever the technology or energy sources at hand there are simply resource limits, Which we aren't even close to meeting, we have enough Uranium and Thorium to sustain 10 billion people at a greater standard of living than us for millions of years. We have desalination technology so it isn't actually a resource limit provided you have an abundant source of energy. The outer space angle strikes me as a fantasy or at least way beyond anything we can exploit in any meaningful future. It is what we'll do eventually, even if we won't be using it within the next 50 years Earth can still support us just fine that long (though the process will probably start to really get underway in that timeframe, even if it takes centuries before most people live in space). Once we do have such a space presence the economy will continue to grow and they'll be almost nothing that could stop it (an interstellar civilisation would be almost impossible to wipe out). Malthus was right in principle, just not on some specifics. Then why haven't Malthusian predictions come true? The closest Malthusians have come is to be wrong in principle but right on some specifics (in cases where they corrected predicted something running out but didn't anticipate it being replaced by something else). Article:Not really, no growth economy has been how humans have tended to live throughout history (though it might be more accurate to call them no overall growth, they did have their ups and downs). Article:Not really, keeping things the way they are is really just a definition of conservatism. Besides, how else could you explain the election of various green parties? Article:You must ignore technology to believe that the Earth will compel us to stop growing our economy any time soon. Article:We'll substitute other resources in their place, do more recycling or even find more. Article:No-growth means extinction. Article:It won't be nature doing the forcing, at least not anytime soon (it would also have to be global otherwise you'll get growth anyway and it probably couldn't be democratic as the majority would want their lives to get better). Article:It is when our energy use gets high enough to be significant compared with what the planet receives from the sun that we'll be looking at a real limit (vertical farming could deal with the agricultural land issue but with high energy requirements) although even then there might still be ways around such a limit.
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Post by Luke Weston on Apr 28, 2012 18:02:50 GMT 9.5
I think, basically, that some people just want to believe in that sort of Club of Rome style Malthusian fatalism, and some people don't. And if they want to believe in that, then they'll kind of see it everywhere.
Personally, I'm not pessimistic about it, I don't believe in that.
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Post by Tom Keen on Apr 28, 2012 18:54:51 GMT 9.5
The growth or no growth question is nearly always over-simplified in these conversations. It depends on how you measure growth, and what that growth is reliant upon. Continued economic growth based on activities that reduce biodiversity (i.e. cause species extinctions) is an approach that can only end badly for humans, as we will suffer serious losses of ecosystem services which are integral to our well-being. In other words, the way we're going is not looking good based on current extinction rates. But if the economy can grow without impacting on biodiversity, what's the problem? Technology can have positive impacts and negative impacts. Temporally, increasing energy consumption through use of nuclear power is only likely to benefit people, whereas increasing energy consumption through fossil fuel use almost certainly won't. Levelling forests to increase GDP growth using the latest technologies is equally as silly. In other words, it's about using technology intelligently. Ultimately, we want T to have a negative sign in the I=PAT equation. Also, an interesting thing about GDP is that it was never designed to measure well-being, yet it is frequently used as a metric for precisely that. And it's an extremely crude metric. Perhaps some other metric for growth would be better, something similar to the GPI perhaps: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genuine_progress_indicator
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Post by Anon on Apr 28, 2012 19:43:01 GMT 9.5
The growth or no growth question is nearly always over-simplified in these conversations. It depends on how you measure growth, and what that growth is reliant upon. It also depends on what your vision of society is, people who think that living in a small cottage on an 'organic' farm is the ideal are going to have different views to those who'd rather live in the United Federation of Planets. Continued economic growth based on activities that reduce biodiversity (i.e. cause species extinctions) is an approach that can only end badly for humans, as we will suffer serious losses of ecosystem services which are integral to our well-being. Other life will take the place of any species which go extinct though there may be some temporary problems as the change over occurs (and ecosystem services are often on a large scale supplied by creatures which are not in danger of going extinct, the fact is that a lot of environmentalism is more about human aesthetic preferences, not that there's anything wrong with making decisions based on what looks better). In other words, the way we're going is not looking good based on current extinction rates. A growing economy also mean that we have more resources to spend on trying to stop species from going extinct along with more people prosperous enough to care about something their than their own survival (environmentalism for the sake of the environment does require people not to be worried they won't be able to get another meal). Temporally, increasing energy consumption through use of nuclear power is only likely to benefit people, Unless you make money selling fossil fuels (or renewable tokens). whereas increasing energy consumption through fossil fuel use almost certainly won't. If it gets people out of poverty then I would state that it has had some positive effect, even if the negative effect is more than it would have been with nuclear. It is worth noting that coal allowed us to increase our energy usage high enough to do nuclear (i.e. coal is the bridge fuel from renewables to nuclear). Also, an interesting thing about GDP is that it was never designed to measure well-being, yet it is frequently used as a metric for precisely that. Coming up with something better would be challenging and it does tend to mostly correlate with well-being. Focusing more on consumers might be better (it's been noted that the living standard of the formerly communist states didn't get as much worse as you'd expect from the massive drop of GDP largely because most of the economy was engaged in unproductive activities) as economies are primarily demand driven. And it's an extremely crude metric. It's also relatively easy to measure (and good luck getting agreement on what to replace it with). Also from that wikipedia article: Finnish economists Mika Maliranta and Niku Määttänen write that the problem of alternative development indexes is their attempt to combine things that are incommensurable. It is hard to say what they exactly indicate and difficult to make decisions based on them. They can be compared to an indicator that shows the mean of a car's velocity and the amount of fuel left. The ratio of per capita GDP to pollution (e.g. CO₂ emissions) is a much better way of figuring out how well a place is doing on making it people well off while also not destroying the environment.
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Post by Tom Keen on Apr 28, 2012 20:17:52 GMT 9.5
Anon, "Other life will take the place of any species which go extinct though there may be some temporary problems as the change over occurs (and ecosystem services are often on a large scale supplied by creatures which are not in danger of going extinct, the fact is that a lot of environmentalism is more about human aesthetic preferences, not that there's anything wrong with making decisions based on what looks better)." Actually, given the current extinction rate vs. the rate of evolutionary processes, those "temporary problems" could run into the tens or hundreds of thousands of years (or more). There are practical limits to how much change in the earth system we're likely to be able to adapt to - beyond which we'll run into major problems. We rely on functional ecosystems and their components, not just individual species. Aesthtics may be important to some people, but it's certainly not the real issue here. I recommend you check out this site: conservationbytes.com/ , as your above premise about biodiversity and ecosystem services has implications for some of the other comments you made.
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Post by anonposter on Apr 28, 2012 20:54:32 GMT 9.5
Actually, given the current extinction rate vs. the rate of evolutionary processes, those "temporary problems" could run into the tens or hundreds of thousands of years (or more). The species which are going extinct tend not to be the ones whose absence would have massive effects. There are practical limits to how much change in the earth system we're likely to be able to adapt to - beyond which we'll run into major problems. So where are they? With our technology we could probably adapt to much worse than what is even reasonably possible. We rely on functional ecosystems and their components, not just individual species. Actually we've been tending to reduce our reliance in natural ecosystems and instead rely on managed ecosystems (e.g. farms) and that trend is likely to continue (the big chance will be in seafood where we're likely to shift from fishing to aquaculture so as to not depend on the natural oceanic ecosystem). It is also worth noting that Henry Glesson was right.
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Post by davidm on Apr 30, 2012 2:28:20 GMT 9.5
A little note, this thread was started by me, not by the BNC Moderator as indicated under the 'Started by' heading.
MODERATOR Quite right - when I shifted some comments around to new categories the author appeared as Mod. I will have a look at stopping that from happening. However, now we have got going threads seem to, mostly, be posted in the right category.
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Post by Tom Keen on Apr 30, 2012 11:46:58 GMT 9.5
"The species which are going extinct tend not to be the ones whose absence would have massive effects." This comment is unsupported and claims contrary to a large body of scientific literature. "Managed ecosystems" and natural ecosystems are not separate entities either. E.g. what do you think pollinates the majority of plant species people eat? And the evidence points towards a global decline in pollinators, both in the wild and domestically. www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/abstract/S0169-5347%2810%2900036-4 conservationbytes.com/2010/03/11/global-pollinator-declines/Simply stating that technology can compensate for losses in ecosystem services is purely an assumption, and a fairly extreme one. And even if technology could compensate in some circumstances, how much of the world's population will these newly developed technologies be available to? I have no problem supporting technologies when there are clear mechanisms underlying the probability of their success (e.g. replacing coal power plants with nuclear power plants), but beyond that it becomes more of a matter of faith - and I don't buy that. There is plenty to read on the importance of biodiversity; www.ipbes.net/www.maweb.org/en/index.aspx
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Post by max on Apr 30, 2012 14:01:55 GMT 9.5
The ultimate limiting factor on growth is productivity. An increase in productivity means that the capital required to produce one unit of a good is reduced. Productivity gains can be labour or resource saving, or both. Only if the economy stops becoming more productive we run into natural limits to economic growth. So far, there has been a steady increase in productivity in virtually all areas since the industrial revolution and I don't see this stopping, especially as more and more people get access to quality education in the developing world, vastly increasing our pool of "inventive minds", which should lead to further accelerating technological progress.
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Post by BNC Moderator on Apr 30, 2012 14:31:49 GMT 9.5
Just a reminder, especially to those who have newly joined us, that on BNC, assertions must be backed up with authoritative refs/links.
Please check the Comments Policy for further advice
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Post by davidm on May 4, 2012 6:59:06 GMT 9.5
The earth is full, we are hitting the natural limits of growth, presently we are drawing sustainably on one and a half earths, we need a war time commitment to turn things around. Paul Gilding is saying this and more on the linked video.
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Post by anonposter on May 4, 2012 8:57:17 GMT 9.5
Yet we have national parks set aside where development (basically any industry other than tourism) is pretty much banned, if the Earth really were full that would not be the case (i.e. we'd be tearing down the trees in them for more farmland as fast as we could).
Something also tells me that the majority of the public would not accept what you think needs to be done.
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Post by davidm on May 4, 2012 16:02:12 GMT 9.5
The majority of the public doesn't want us to go full steam ahead on nuclear power either. So if we are going to be dictated to by the majority perhaps we should both hang it up.
However Mother Nature is on my side.
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Post by anonposter on May 4, 2012 16:17:19 GMT 9.5
The majority of the public doesn't want us to go full steam ahead on nuclear power either. Once it becomes clear that it is that or what you think is going to happen they probably will (it is worth noting that the activists who protest nuclear power plants are a minority). So if we are going to be dictated to by the majority perhaps we should both hang it up. What the public wants is no nuclear, no coal, no oil, no methane, no wind turbines, no solar panels, no dams, no geothermal and reliable electricity, they can't have all of them and have to decide which of those they'll compromise on. However Mother Nature is on my side. That remains to be seen (and there are good reasons to suspect that isn't the case, the fact that we can use nuclear to supply more than enough energy for >>10 billion people to have higher per capita energy usage than we do for more than a million years is one of them).
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Post by davidm on May 4, 2012 16:45:54 GMT 9.5
I think I have some clear evidence that desalinization is not going to have much impact when we hit our natural water limits. Saudi Arabia has lots of cheap energy, lots of coastal ocean front, lots of sun, not that many people and I understand has a number of desalinization plants. They used up their aquifer which previously had made them abundant wheat growers but when their aquifer went dry they became wheat importers. Where was all that desalinized water? (You'll need to scroll down a little to see the graph-article.)
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Post by anonposter on May 4, 2012 17:52:07 GMT 9.5
I wouldn't call Saudi Arabia an example of good governance (and am amazed they're number 5 on a list of where people would like to move to). It's also worth nothing that Saudi Arabia was subsiding wheat growing at several times world prices (at least according to the link you provided) which makes building desalination to continue seem like a bad idea (I'd would tend to say that except for potable water if you need massive subsidies for your agriculture then you probably should just import from where it can be grown cheaply).
The fact that they have the option to import from a place(s) with more water than they do does indicate that we haven't reached our limits.
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Post by anonposter on May 5, 2012 13:51:42 GMT 9.5
As to the "otherwise", I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss my point. If you have noticed nuclear power advocacy appears to be often linked to a rather cavalier attitude toward population and economic growth limits, as if NPPs by virtue of their clean and unlimited bounty would obviate any serious concern for these matters. It isn't just nuclear on its own which does that but nuclear power does help. If you think, as I do, that honoring these limits is critical to our future survival then these nuclear associated attitudes would seem to be dangerous expressions of denial. To be able to think in terms of limits we need to know what those limits are and with nuclear power we know the energy usage limits to be quite a bit above where we are now (and not by a little). Technology also has a history of being able to overcome resource limits so to assume that there indeed are limits you've got to assume we will stop coming up with new technology (and we can not rule out the possibility of unlimited economic growth either).
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Post by max on May 5, 2012 13:58:38 GMT 9.5
I predict that the world economy keeps growing throughout the 21st century. First of all, there are still plenty of regions which have to catch up, secondly there are innovative developments in the pipeline which would transform the economy and lead to rapid spurs of growth (additive manufacturing, for example). World population will probably level off at around 9 or 10 Billion and then start to decline, since with increasing prosperity and decreasing child mortality, the growth rate always shrinks.
Under optimistic projections, the per capita GDP in 2100 could be 5,000,000 in 2008$.
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Post by davidm on May 6, 2012 11:00:46 GMT 9.5
Earth supports the only life system that we know about in this universe. That suggests we are part of something very fragile. The idea that technology, which is really only just a tool, is going to come up with some new kind of hammer that is going to cover our ecologically bad behavior just doesn't compute for me. Ultimately we have to scale down and live by Mother Nature's rules, a part of which involves respecting the Malthusian limits to exploiting our biosphere. Mega-state style technological innovation to a major degree just kicks the can down the road. Eventually we hit the wall.
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Post by anonposter on May 6, 2012 12:46:10 GMT 9.5
Earth supports the only life system that we know about in this universe. That suggests we are part of something very fragile. We have a sample size of only one so we can't really extrapolate much based on that. Besides, Earth has been through things far worse than what we're currently doing and life managed to survive (yes, there were some mass extinctions, but life bounced back). I personally expect that we'll find life to be rather common throughout the universe existing wherever it is possible to live, of course we are still guessing on this matter (though I have reasons for suspecting that we're the only intelligent life). The idea that technology, which is really only just a tool, is going to come up with some new kind of hammer that is going to cover our ecologically bad behavior just doesn't compute for me. Well we've come up with technologies which can allow us to cover such bad behaviour before so I don't see it as much of stretch to believe that we'll do it again. Ultimately we have to scale down and live by Mother Nature's rules, a part of which involves respecting the Malthusian limits to exploiting our biosphere. The problem with this idea is that the limits are determined by what technology you have available, a civilisation using nuclear power can use much more energy than one using fossil fuels before it runs into its energy use limit (and a fossil fuel based civilisation can use more energy than one based on wood burning). Mega-state style technological innovation to a major degree just kicks the can down the road. Eventually we hit the wall. It isn't even certain that there is a wall to hit and at the very least what wall there may be is quite far away from where we are now (energy usage on a planet is most likely to be ultimately limited by waste heat and even that isn't certain). Maybe at some point a trillion years in the future we'll reach the point at which our resources are truly exhausted but it isn't in our immediate future (i.e. the one we should actually be planning for, not merely idly speculating about).
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Post by davidm on May 7, 2012 3:23:02 GMT 9.5
It seems to me one of premises of this forum is the understanding that there is an environmental limit ie our ability to retain a human civilization if we reach a level of CO2 concentration above a certain amount. Many have chosen 450 ppm as a kind of tipping point. Now if we reach that point and appear to be still viable that doesn't invalidate the premise that too much ghg is a civilization killer. There would appear to be a limit point somewhere. In much the same way it seems to me the Malthusian notion of exponential growth limits appears to be valid despite the fact that Malthus and many of his proponents have not been very good at specifying what precisely those limits are. In fact Malthus idea was so solid that Darwin's unifying science of biological process incorporated Malthus insight as the core driver of evolutionary selection. Among the most celebrated modern exponents of Malthusian thinking has been The Club of Rome expounding their views in a 1972 book called The Limits of Growth in which they projected future trends in the areas of Industrial Development, Population, Food Supplies, Nonrenewable Resources and Environment. It seems to me that, like Malthus, their principles were sound but of course you can't exactly predict the future and they made some pretty bad predictions, like food supplies, fossil fuel reserves and so on. Here is one group that calls them out, a libertarian free market outfit. I'm wondering anon how much your thinking jibes with theirs and whether you think they basically got it right, with their idea of a basically self-adjusting civilization that doesn't need to seriously concern themselves with limits. At least that's how I read them.
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Post by anonposter on May 7, 2012 12:43:40 GMT 9.5
It seems to me one of premises of this forum is the understanding that there is an environmental limit ie our ability to retain a human civilization if we reach a level of CO2 concentration above a certain amount. CO 2 concentration does appear to be the limit on how much we can use fossil fuels (it's probably one we'll reach before we run out of fossil fuels). Many have chosen 450 ppm as a kind of tipping point. Now if we reach that point and appear to be still viable that doesn't invalidate the premise that too much ghg is a civilization killer. There would appear to be a limit point somewhere. We probably would still have a viable civilisation even at that concentration (though with a lot of cities underwater and probably with quite a few species missing for the environment). Then there's geoengineering which may be able to increase the limit. In much the same way it seems to me the Malthusian notion of exponential growth limits appears to be valid despite the fact that Malthus and many of his proponents have not been very good at specifying what precisely those limits are. If it was right then why has it failed basically every time it has been applied to humans? The things Malthus didn't take into sufficient account of was technology, humans are the only species which can consciously alter its environment to better suit its own needs. In fact Malthus idea was so solid that Darwin's unifying science of biological process incorporated Malthus insight as the core driver of evolutionary selection. Other species which don't have the same ability to create technology as we do do tend to follow Malthus's predictions. Among the most celebrated modern exponents of Malthusian thinking has been The Club of Rome expounding their views in a 1972 book called The Limits of Growth in which they projected future trends in the areas of Industrial Development, Population, Food Supplies, Nonrenewable Resources and Environment. It seems to me that, like Malthus, their principles were sound but of course you can't exactly predict the future and they made some pretty bad predictions, like food supplies, fossil fuel reserves and so on. How about we just say that they, like basically everyone who has tried applying Malthusian ideas to humans got it wrong? If everyone who applies a principle gets it wrong then I'm not at all inclined to call that principle right. Here is one group that calls them out, a libertarian free market outfit. I'm wondering anon how much your thinking jibes with theirs and whether you think they basically got it right, with their idea of a basically self-adjusting civilization that doesn't need to seriously concern themselves with limits. At least that's how I read them. History does appear to support the cornucopian viewpoint and when I look at what technology we could be using I see significant room for growth. Maybe at some point in the distant future we'll actually run into limits to growth, but I don't think we'll run into any such limits until well after we've become an interstellar civilisation (if we can survive until the universe can no longer support life I'd say that'd be pretty good).
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Post by davidm on May 8, 2012 11:38:56 GMT 9.5
Interesting how much we disagree anon. You think our technological skills fundamentally change the ballgame with respect to human limits. I think it has only moved the goal posts. And no I don't think Malthus has been proved wrong substantively with respect to humans. The destruction of most human cultures in the last few hundred years due to colonialist conquest should be a warning of what our future could look like.
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Post by anonposter on May 8, 2012 13:48:51 GMT 9.5
Interesting how much we disagree anon. You think our technological skills fundamentally change the ballgame with respect to human limits. I think it has only moved the goal posts. If you can move the goal posts far enough that's all you really need (I would be quite accepting of something we could only use for a hundred years and letting those in a hundred years time deal with replacing it, from the point of view of energy production that's longer than the lifespan of most power plants). It is possible that some day we'll come up against hard limits we can't get through but when I look at what resources are available and what technology we have or could have I just don't see any limits we'll be running into any time soon (there are some limits we'll run into if we continue doing what we're currently doing, but I can already see workable alternatives, some of which are even in limited use or have been used). And no I don't think Malthus has been proved wrong substantively with respect to humans. Well I haven't heard of a Malthusian prediction which has turned out to be right. The destruction of most human cultures in the last few hundred years due to colonialist conquest should be a warning of what our future could look like. Only if a more advanced culture decides to colonise us (and I happen to think that we are alone in the universe).
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Post by BNC Moderator on May 8, 2012 14:14:38 GMT 9.5
David M and Anon - your comments regarding Malthus, growth etc have been moved to Natural Limits of Economic Growth, which better reflects your discussion than the "Debunking anti-nuke misinformation" topic which you strayed from. Please continue here. Thankyou.
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Post by davidm on May 18, 2012 19:38:24 GMT 9.5
Here is one article that discusses natural limits of life support systems, in this case 9 of them. The writer sees 3 of them as already being breeched and most of the others on the precipice.
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Post by anonposter on May 19, 2012 9:35:21 GMT 9.5
Nope, to be able to actually tell whether they are real limits or whether there is anything we can do about them I'd need to be able to actually read it.
That it mentions ozone would appear to indicate that it isn't likely to list only those we're about the breach as we're actually fixing that problem (or more accurately waiting for it to fix itself now that we've stopped causing it). MODERATOR I just checked the New Scientist link, given in the comment above, by clicking on the words "one link" and it now appears to work. Takes you to the article "From ocean to ozone: Earth's nine life-support systems".
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