An Update of Data for the World3 Limits to Growth Model

The Limits to Growth has already been discussed (See Limits to Growth). The model predicts a possible global disaster occurring in 2015-16. (It hasn't happened yet - 2018 - and if it doesn't happen by 2022 there will be a clear departure from the predictions for a continuance of 1970 conditions of trade and production).

It is now 18 years since the last published "goodness of fit" for data to the model. How well is the model performing?

The industrial production data seemed to be spot on until end of 2018:

In the next 2-5 years we will see whether we slide down the right hand side of the green curve or experience the blue future.

The population predictions seem to have been far too optimistic (ie: pessimistic for Catholics and Mohammedans and Postmodernists).

The high population growth makes a collapse all the more probable.

Data Sources

The data was obtained from the World Bank and from the Dutch CPB Economic Policy Analysis World Trade Monitor.

World industrial production per capita is shown below:

Population growth was linear over the past 13 years and world population was 7,119,506,000 at the end of 2013. It was 6,102,050,000 in 2000.

I have just come across another paper by Turner updating the the Limits to Growth data: Turner, G. (2014) ‘Is Global Collapse Imminent?’, MSSI Research Paper No. 4,

Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, The University of Melbourne.

http://www.sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/files/mssi/MSSI-ResearchPaper-4_Turner_2014.pdf

This broadly agrees with the update given above.

06/04/2014 Updated April 2018

Comments

The Falklands have always been Argentine - Las Malvinas son Argentinas

"The Falklands have always been Argentine" is taught to every Argentine child as a matter of faith. What was Argentina during the time when it "always" possessed Las Malvinas? In this article I will trace the history of Argentina in the context of its physical and political relationship with "Las Malvinas", the Falkland Islands. The Argentine claim to the Falkland Islands dates from a brief episode in 1831-32 so it is like Canada claiming the USA despite two centuries of separate development. This might sound like ancient history but Argentina has gone to war for this ancient claim so the following article is well worth reading. For a summary of the legal case see: Las Malvinas: The Legal Case Argentina traces its origins to Spanish South America when it was part of the Viceroyalty of the Rio del Plata. The Falklands lay off the Viceroyalty of Peru, controlled by the Captain General of Chile. In 1810 the Falklands were far from the geographical b...

Practical Idealism by Richard Nicolaus Coudenhove-Kalergi

Coudenhove-Kalergi was a pioneer of European integration. He was the founder and President for 49 years of the Paneuropean Union. His parents were Heinrich von Coudenhove-Kalergi, an Austro-Hungarian diplomat, and Mitsuko Aoyama, the daughter of an oil merchant, antiques-dealer, and huge landowner family in Tokyo. His "Pan-Europa" was published in 1923 and contained a membership form for the Pan-Europa movement. Coudenhove-Kalergi's movement held its first Congress in Vienna in 1926. In 1927 the French Prime Minister, Aristide Briand was elected honorary president. Personalities attending included: Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann and Sigmund Freud. Figures who later became central to founding the EU, such as Konrad Adenauer became members . His basic idea was that democracy was a transitional stage that leads to rule by a new aristocracy that is largely taken from the Jewish "master race" (Kalergi's terminology). His movement was reviled by Hitler and H...

Membership of the EU: pros and cons

5th December 2013, update May 2016 Nigel Lawson, ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, recently criticised the UK membership of the EU , the media has covered his mainstream view as if he is a bad boy starting a fight in the school playground, but is he right about the EU? What has changed that makes EU membership a burning issue? What has changed is that the 19 countries of the Eurozone are now seeking political union to escape their financial problems. Seven further EU countries have signed up to join the Euro but the British and Danish have opted out. The EU is rapidly becoming two blocks - the 26 and Britain and Denmark. Lawson's fear was that if Britain stays in the EU it will be isolated and dominated by a Eurozone bloc that uses "unified representation of the euro area" , so acting like a single country which controls 90% of the vote in the EU with no vetoes available to the UK in most decisions. The full plans for Eurozone po...

Political Thoughts - the magazine

Search This Blog