"If the projections are correct they will show one thing for certain:
politicians, economists and scientists cannot assess risks correctly."
New Scientist this week had a short article on the "Limits to Growth", revisiting the 1972 book by Meadows et al. The book gave an account of a computer model of how the world's population, resources and economy would function over the coming 130 years. It predicted a disaster in the twenty first century if nothing were changed. At first the book created a stir and world leaders all agreed that action was needed. It then attracted ferocious attacks on ideological grounds, the media carried uniform condemnation and declared the predictions to be incorrect. Within 5 years the book and its predictions had been forgotten by the bulk of the population. This media furore was a forerunner of the recent reactions to predictions of "global warming". The New Scientist article pointed out that the predictions in Limits to Growth now seem to have been accurate.
A graph showing the predictions of an updated version of the model is shown below:
The most worrying trend is that industrial production is about to reach an all-time peak. As industrial production falls the food supply falls (each calorie of food needs 10 calories of industrial input in the form of fuel etc.). The population of the world collapses from 2030 onwards.
In 2008 the predictions of the original model were re-visited (Turner (2008)) and the chilling result was that the changes over the past 30 years fitted the model. A graph showing Turner's fit of observed industrial output to the standard run of the model is shown below:
Most of the other variables have a similarly good fit. Click here and take a look at the graphics at the end of Turner's article to see how well the model predicted a wide range of variables. It is faintly surprising that this test of the model has not gained much attention, had it not been for the New Scientist article I would have missed it. On page 23 of Growing within Limits there is also a set of charts summarizing Turner's data confirming that the predictions were accurate:
Also see A Comparison Limits to Growth with 30 Years of Real Data and An Update of Data for World3.
It is now 14 years since the last published "goodness of fit" for data to the model. How well is the model performing?
I have obtained some data taking the model to 2013. The industrial production data seems to be spot on:
In the next 2-5 years we will see whether we slide down the right hand side of the green curve.
The population predictions seem to have been too optimistic.
The high population growth makes a collapse all the more probable.
I read the original "Limits to Growth" in 1972 and had forgotten about it. The media campaign convinced me that there must be something wrong with the assumptions and the model would not apply. If it does apply then the current high price of oil, the running out of rare earth metals, the population hitting 7 billion might mean that our current economic crisis is not a sub-prime then national debt crisis, it may well be the "peak oil", peak resources, overpopulation disaster as predicted. The high/variable price of oil and the shift in production to the East as the massive Eastern populations became productive being natural factors that precipitated the shift from production to borrowing in the West... (see Hirsch Report on the Peaking of World Oil Production for an in depth review - the authors point out that action must be taken 20 years before peak to avoid serious dislocations.)
The real data is now in for 2002-2011:
This shows that peak oil is past but that production is continuing apace from ever more difficult sources (there have been record high prices and huge price instability, which would be expected from a depleting resource).
Commodities in general are in increasingly short supply:
Prices can crash as commodities get too expensive because demand falls and economies falter.
So everybody, if the models are right then this is as good as it gets....enjoy.
By the way, does anyone remember "A Blueprint for Survival" which was another document in 1972 that predicted the collapse of civilisation in the twenty first century? (The Limits to Growth was a key reference in the "Blueprint"). Again this was dismissed as the gibbering of hippies and environmentalists by the media.
What is intriguing, from the "World3" computer model is that we do not really get any warning of the collapse: within just over ten years all the growth curves, except pollution, turn around into catastrophic collapse curves. It is this diabolical timing of events that you cannot predict from simply arguing that resources will become depleted or too many people will have trouble feeding themselves. The original computer model demonstrates the sudden turn around only too well, sadly, computer says that almost any intervention after 2000 AD is unable to stop the turnround - we should have acted in the 1970s like the ecologists and others said...
Meadows et al (2004) produced an update to the computer model which was a bit more optimistic. They still found that business as usual, the "Standard Run" led to rapid collapse on the same time scale as the original model:
"Under the "business as usual scenario," world society proceeds in a traditional manner without major deviation from the policies pursued during most of the 20th century. In this scenario, society proceeds as long as possible without major policy change. Population rises to more than seven billion by 2030. But a few decades into the 21st century, growth of the economy stops and reverses abruptly."
If the projections are correct the very last date for "saving the world as it is" was 2002 and would have required a global 2 child per family policy.
If the projections are correct they will show one thing for certain: politicians, economists and scientists cannot assess risks correctly. If the worst happens those who believe that global governance is the answer will demonstrate that they are blind to this essential lesson from the models. If there are massive changes afoot we must adapt to the coming changes and not allow politicians, economists or scientists to fool us into thinking that if they formed a global government and implemented geo-engineering and enforced social programs it will solve our problems. The problem of exponential growth was largely created by globalization and can be ameliorated by de-globalizing, although at considerable short-term cost.
The lesson from Limits to Growth is that globalization - the use of resources from beyond your locality - is dangerous. Each economy should be sustainable and should not become entirely dependent on external inputs from other economies.
If you found this article interesting link to it, tweet it (TinyURL http://tinyurl.com/agg8gst ), and tell your friends! They need to know.
A Note on Exponential Growth
In nature a special sort of growth often occurs in which the rate at which a thing grows depends upon how much of the thing is already present. A good example of this sort of growth is a population of animals: 2 animals might have 4 offspring and each pair of offspring might continue to have 4 more, the population then grows as 2,4,8,16,32 etc.. . This doubling with every generation is an example of what is known as "exponential growth".
Exponential growth cannot continue for ever because the number of
offspring will rapidly fill the whole globe, at some stage a shortage of
food or other resources will inhibit growth. In other words there are
limits to growth.
If resources are effectively infinite but become progressively harder to exploit the growth curve will gently slope towards the horizontal.
In nature and in economics a slightly different growth curve is very often found in which the population overshoots the resources. The simplest case of this type of overshoot would be a cage full of rabbits with a large amount of food in the cage and a small trickle of food supplied all the time. The population of rabbits will increase freely until all the food is used up and then fall back to the level that can be sustained by the trickle of food.
Consider any growth curve you have seen, for instance the growth of stock prices, the growth of the railways, the growth of empires etc., etc. almost all real growth overshoots. Boom and bust is a rule, not an exception.
If you see a model of growth in a complex system that has no overshoots then it is 99% likely to be a lie! In the late twentieth century there were several government inspired models of the global system that had no overshoots, these must be propaganda to allay fears of sudden changes to the world ecosystem. Economists were particularly fond of non-overshooting projections, shame on them! The whole of real economics is the story of boom-bust cycles so the models produced by some of these economists must have been "paid for". There is a strong possibility that some "models" were produced for comparison with World3 with the intention of obfuscation rather than enlightenment.
Global Systems overshoot and Global Warming
The more acute reader may have spotted that the global collapse predicted in global systems models means that there is no need to do anything about global warming. Carbon dioxide levels will fall after the global industrial collapse. If we try to prolong the period before collapse the pollution and warming will just be worse in the long run. My advice to world leaders and ecologists is to do nothing at a global level. Wait and see, if industrial output over the next five years follows the curve in Limits to Growth nothing can be done. The British government should follow the plan in Global warming - what do we do now?.
In Growing within Limits, a major report to the Club of Rome, the author on page 10 gives a whole series of "trend" graphs showing how awful the future will be with unchecked growth but on page 18 shows the results of a global system model in which pollution falls to almost zero after an inevitable global collapse before 2100. Despite this evidence that the world can take care of itself and that any intervention is too late the author still insists upon intervention.
POLITICAL THOUGHTS click here to see the whole POLITICAL THOUGHTS magazine POLITICAL THOUGHTS!
See:
Global mineral reserves - are we running out?
Global warming - what do we do now?
The future of globalization
Global warming - man or nature?
Is climate change a threat because of overpopulation?
Globalization and global warming
The aims of localism
Other models:
GUMBO Includes finite size of globe - similar predictions to World3
International futures an economics based modelling system that allows infinite growth. Click here for the online IFS model
There are other models such as DICE that focus on global warming. TARGETS is another modelling program that emphasises socioeconomics.
References
Hirsch, R.L., Bezdek, R., Wendling, R, (2005) PEAKING OF WORLD OIL PRODUCTION: IMPACTS, MITIGATION, & RISK MANAGEMENT SAIC http://www.netl.doe.gov/energy-analyses/pubs/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdfdocument.
Meadows, D.H., Meadows, D.L., Randers, J. and Behrens III, W.W. (1972) The
Limits to Growth: a Report for the Club of Rome's Project on the Predicament
of Mankind. New York: Universe Books.
Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Dennis Meadows*. (2004) A Synopsis: Limits to Growth, The 30-Year Update. http://www.mnforsustain.org/meadows_limits_to_growth_30_year_update_2004.htm
New Scientist: Boom and doom: Revisiting prophecies of collapse. 04 January 2012 by Debora MacKenzie Magazine issue 2846.
Turner, G. (2008). "A comparison of the Limits to Growth with 30 years of reality". Global Environmental Change 18 (3): 397–411. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2008.05.001 Click here for a free link.
D.P. van Vuuren (2009) Growing Within Limits, Netherlands Environmental Agency http://www.rivm.nl/bibliotheek/rapporten/500201001.pdf
First published Jan 6 2012
New Scientist this week had a short article on the "Limits to Growth", revisiting the 1972 book by Meadows et al. The book gave an account of a computer model of how the world's population, resources and economy would function over the coming 130 years. It predicted a disaster in the twenty first century if nothing were changed. At first the book created a stir and world leaders all agreed that action was needed. It then attracted ferocious attacks on ideological grounds, the media carried uniform condemnation and declared the predictions to be incorrect. Within 5 years the book and its predictions had been forgotten by the bulk of the population. This media furore was a forerunner of the recent reactions to predictions of "global warming". The New Scientist article pointed out that the predictions in Limits to Growth now seem to have been accurate.
A graph showing the predictions of an updated version of the model is shown below:
 |
| Limits to Growth. World3-03 Model. From the German Wikipedia - the red line is resource availability. |
The most worrying trend is that industrial production is about to reach an all-time peak. As industrial production falls the food supply falls (each calorie of food needs 10 calories of industrial input in the form of fuel etc.). The population of the world collapses from 2030 onwards.
In 2008 the predictions of the original model were re-visited (Turner (2008)) and the chilling result was that the changes over the past 30 years fitted the model. A graph showing Turner's fit of observed industrial output to the standard run of the model is shown below:
 |
| Limits to Growth. World3 Model Industrial output in 3 scenarios. |
 |
| Limits to Growth. World3 Model. Comparison of predicted to observed data. |
It is now 14 years since the last published "goodness of fit" for data to the model. How well is the model performing?
I have obtained some data taking the model to 2013. The industrial production data seems to be spot on:
In the next 2-5 years we will see whether we slide down the right hand side of the green curve.
The population predictions seem to have been too optimistic.
The high population growth makes a collapse all the more probable.
I read the original "Limits to Growth" in 1972 and had forgotten about it. The media campaign convinced me that there must be something wrong with the assumptions and the model would not apply. If it does apply then the current high price of oil, the running out of rare earth metals, the population hitting 7 billion might mean that our current economic crisis is not a sub-prime then national debt crisis, it may well be the "peak oil", peak resources, overpopulation disaster as predicted. The high/variable price of oil and the shift in production to the East as the massive Eastern populations became productive being natural factors that precipitated the shift from production to borrowing in the West... (see Hirsch Report on the Peaking of World Oil Production for an in depth review - the authors point out that action must be taken 20 years before peak to avoid serious dislocations.)
 |
| Peak oil: Image courtesy Wikimedia |
 |
| Global crude oil production, 2002-2010 showing peak oil. |
Commodities in general are in increasingly short supply:
 |
| Commodity prices 1900-2011. Courtesy: BBC Business |
So everybody, if the models are right then this is as good as it gets....enjoy.
By the way, does anyone remember "A Blueprint for Survival" which was another document in 1972 that predicted the collapse of civilisation in the twenty first century? (The Limits to Growth was a key reference in the "Blueprint"). Again this was dismissed as the gibbering of hippies and environmentalists by the media.
What is intriguing, from the "World3" computer model is that we do not really get any warning of the collapse: within just over ten years all the growth curves, except pollution, turn around into catastrophic collapse curves. It is this diabolical timing of events that you cannot predict from simply arguing that resources will become depleted or too many people will have trouble feeding themselves. The original computer model demonstrates the sudden turn around only too well, sadly, computer says that almost any intervention after 2000 AD is unable to stop the turnround - we should have acted in the 1970s like the ecologists and others said...
Meadows et al (2004) produced an update to the computer model which was a bit more optimistic. They still found that business as usual, the "Standard Run" led to rapid collapse on the same time scale as the original model:
"Under the "business as usual scenario," world society proceeds in a traditional manner without major deviation from the policies pursued during most of the 20th century. In this scenario, society proceeds as long as possible without major policy change. Population rises to more than seven billion by 2030. But a few decades into the 21st century, growth of the economy stops and reverses abruptly."
If the projections are correct the very last date for "saving the world as it is" was 2002 and would have required a global 2 child per family policy.
If the projections are correct they will show one thing for certain: politicians, economists and scientists cannot assess risks correctly. If the worst happens those who believe that global governance is the answer will demonstrate that they are blind to this essential lesson from the models. If there are massive changes afoot we must adapt to the coming changes and not allow politicians, economists or scientists to fool us into thinking that if they formed a global government and implemented geo-engineering and enforced social programs it will solve our problems. The problem of exponential growth was largely created by globalization and can be ameliorated by de-globalizing, although at considerable short-term cost.
The lesson from Limits to Growth is that globalization - the use of resources from beyond your locality - is dangerous. Each economy should be sustainable and should not become entirely dependent on external inputs from other economies.
If you found this article interesting link to it, tweet it (TinyURL http://tinyurl.com/agg8gst ), and tell your friends! They need to know.
A Note on Exponential Growth
If resources are effectively infinite but become progressively harder to exploit the growth curve will gently slope towards the horizontal.
Consider any growth curve you have seen, for instance the growth of stock prices, the growth of the railways, the growth of empires etc., etc. almost all real growth overshoots. Boom and bust is a rule, not an exception.
If you see a model of growth in a complex system that has no overshoots then it is 99% likely to be a lie! In the late twentieth century there were several government inspired models of the global system that had no overshoots, these must be propaganda to allay fears of sudden changes to the world ecosystem. Economists were particularly fond of non-overshooting projections, shame on them! The whole of real economics is the story of boom-bust cycles so the models produced by some of these economists must have been "paid for". There is a strong possibility that some "models" were produced for comparison with World3 with the intention of obfuscation rather than enlightenment.
Global Systems overshoot and Global Warming
The more acute reader may have spotted that the global collapse predicted in global systems models means that there is no need to do anything about global warming. Carbon dioxide levels will fall after the global industrial collapse. If we try to prolong the period before collapse the pollution and warming will just be worse in the long run. My advice to world leaders and ecologists is to do nothing at a global level. Wait and see, if industrial output over the next five years follows the curve in Limits to Growth nothing can be done. The British government should follow the plan in Global warming - what do we do now?.
In Growing within Limits, a major report to the Club of Rome, the author on page 10 gives a whole series of "trend" graphs showing how awful the future will be with unchecked growth but on page 18 shows the results of a global system model in which pollution falls to almost zero after an inevitable global collapse before 2100. Despite this evidence that the world can take care of itself and that any intervention is too late the author still insists upon intervention.
POLITICAL THOUGHTS click here to see the whole POLITICAL THOUGHTS magazine POLITICAL THOUGHTS!
See:
Global mineral reserves - are we running out?
Global warming - what do we do now?
The future of globalization
Global warming - man or nature?
Is climate change a threat because of overpopulation?
Globalization and global warming
The aims of localism
Other models:
GUMBO Includes finite size of globe - similar predictions to World3
International futures an economics based modelling system that allows infinite growth. Click here for the online IFS model
There are other models such as DICE that focus on global warming. TARGETS is another modelling program that emphasises socioeconomics.
References
Hirsch, R.L., Bezdek, R., Wendling, R, (2005) PEAKING OF WORLD OIL PRODUCTION: IMPACTS, MITIGATION, & RISK MANAGEMENT SAIC http://www.netl.doe.gov/energy-analyses/pubs/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdfdocument.
Meadows, D.H., Meadows, D.L., Randers, J. and Behrens III, W.W. (1972) The
Limits to Growth: a Report for the Club of Rome's Project on the Predicament
of Mankind. New York: Universe Books.
Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Dennis Meadows*. (2004) A Synopsis: Limits to Growth, The 30-Year Update. http://www.mnforsustain.org/meadows_limits_to_growth_30_year_update_2004.htm
New Scientist: Boom and doom: Revisiting prophecies of collapse. 04 January 2012 by Debora MacKenzie Magazine issue 2846.
Turner, G. (2008). "A comparison of the Limits to Growth with 30 years of reality". Global Environmental Change 18 (3): 397–411. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2008.05.001 Click here for a free link.
D.P. van Vuuren (2009) Growing Within Limits, Netherlands Environmental Agency http://www.rivm.nl/bibliotheek/rapporten/500201001.pdf
First published Jan 6 2012
Comments
I do not agree that ignoring global warming is a good idea. As you yourself point out, almost any economic scenario overshoots. A factor is unexpected feedback loops, which have almost all increased the problem. And coping with such things as shortages of essential minerals will lead to using less efficient processes, leading to a higher use of fuel, thus more CO2.
Since the leaders of the world are doing little to constrain greenhouse gases anyway, we'll be able to observe the results ourselves if we live long enough.