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spodek | 4 years ago

Because the data keeps matching their Business as Usual model. I think there's more recent research, but here's a paper from 2014, showing 40 years of reasonable fit: http://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/M.... If we keep matching their model, we'll soon see dramatic population declines.

Also, the patterns revealed in their models are useful for understanding patterns in nature and human interaction with it.

discuss

order

geoalchimista|4 years ago

Just looking at Figure 1 on page 8 of the paper you mentioned, it can go either way because we haven't seen a reversal in any of the trends. That is hardly a prediction. For example, if one looks at the "Services per capita", is there any sign that it will meet an inflection point in the next few years?

I know it is always appealing to tell a story with a grand unifying narrative. But sound research must prop it up with empirical evidence. Could there be limits to growth? Probably. But a highly simplistic model not informed by appropriate data or economic understanding is not the way to tell such limits.

baq|4 years ago

> Could there be limits to growth? Probably.

that's what an economist would answer. ask a physicist.

for best results, get an economist and a physicist in the same room and ask them both.

api|4 years ago

There have to be limits to growth, but we won’t know where they are except in retrospect. We also may never hit them due to fertility decline which occurs in all wealthy societies. Fertility decline plus efficiency increase could cause consumption of some resources to fall.

Space migration doesn’t change the equation much on Earth unless you start mining and manufacturing off world and importing product, and that is pretty far off.

teabee89|4 years ago

"Could there be limits to growth?" Yes 100% (you cannot extract indefinitely more and more every year from finite resources), the debate is simply when we'll peak for a given ressource (20 years, 100 years, 1 million years) and the size of such an impact on the economy.

AlotOfReading|4 years ago

It's worth noting that world3 model is fairly sensitive to initial conditions and small perturbations can yield population predictions exceeding 20 billion or under 1 billion [0]. It's pretty unclear whether the patterns are actually useful or actually "natural" rather than artificial. For instance, virtually all scenarios in world3 end up in a peak->collapse, but it strains credulity to imagine that similarly applies in the real world.

[0] https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.44.6.820

actually_a_dog|4 years ago

> For instance, virtually all scenarios in world3 end up in a peak->collapse, but it strains credulity to imagine that similarly applies in the real world.

Why? Many civilizations have come and gone through the collapse cycle already. Why do you suspect we're any different? What makes you think the ecosystem can even tolerate 9-10 billion of us?