[jedrider]

Regarding the US, your comments are also spot-on. The US loses, on average, 6.000 acres a day of forests and farmland to endless suburban growth. There exists little to no planning of communities. The urban areas have been hollowed-out and the suburban areas constructed after WW II are now experiencing abandonment and dilapidation. The US concept of a throwaway society has permeated all facets of life.

U.S. = $

Not by chance.

[vtsnowedin]

The urban areas have been hollowed-out and the suburban areas constructed after WW II are now experiencing abandonment and dilapidation.

You should go to Google earth and zoom in on Levittown NY on long island which is one of the prototypical suburbs of NY city then go to the street view feature and observe how "un abandoned" it is.

[jedrider]

The urban areas have been hollowed-out and the suburban areas constructed after WW II are now experiencing abandonment and dilapidation.

You should go to Google earth and zoom in on Levittown NY on long island which is one of the prototypical suburbs of NY city then go to the street view feature and observe how "un abandoned" it is.

Yes, full speed ahead. Urban areas are actually being renewed. Suburban areas are not being abandoned. Forested areas are probably still being cut down. It's called the "Population Bomb" which, as far as we're concerned is an adjunct to "Peak Oil".

[AdamB]

It's called the "Population Bomb" which, as far as we're concerned is an adjunct to "Peak Oil".

Only if you don't know the difference between Ehrlich's work being used to claim the Great Dieoff by the end of the 1980's and the McPeakster Doom claimed for 2005 on Thanksgiving day.

[jedrider]

The longer we prolong our population explosion, the steeper the descent later.

There are elements to a population explosion:

1. They allow for more exploitations of resources.
2. They give some resilience to local situations.
3. Our technology explosion seems to have been a result of it, too and certainly benefits from it.

The down side:

1. Eventually, critical resources will make themselves felt and peak oil certainly being one of them at the top of the list.
2. Eventually, we destroy our habitat, as we are currently doing and, maybe, that's even more significant than peak oil.
3. The nature of logarithmic growth was already outlined by the Club of Rome, which I believe is still considered accurate.

Of course, you like to cherry pick only singular 'The End is Nigh' overzealous Cassandras.

[AdamB]

Of course, you like to cherry pick only singular 'The End is Nigh' overzealous Cassandras.

They are only claimed to be overzealous Cassandras AFTER they do the prognostication McDoomster routine trumpeted from the rooftops....the suckers and McDoomsters fall for it and amplify it and pretend it is real...and then those who knew better in the first place use it later as an example as to why McDoomsters just don't know bubcuss. And only after THAT are they disavowed as overzealous and Cassandras.

And they aren't Cassandras. She could fortell the future..and was cursed that no one would believe her. Halfwits claiming her mantle aren't Cassandras for two reasons....because other halfwits DO believe them, and they keep getting the future wrong.

[suxs]

Urban areas are actually being renewed. Suburban areas are not being abandoned.

Yes, SOME neighborhoods of SOME urban areas have experienced gentrification; however, the trend that started post-WWII of residents moving away from cities in search of new housing continues unabated. Regarding the 'burbs", I didn't claim all suburban areas are being hollowed-out. To clarify, I stated that the abandonment that devastated cities after WW II is now a problem for inner-ring suburbs built between 1945-1959. The suburbs falling victim to quick decline are the ones that had most of their housing built during this period. Saint Louis, Missouri is a prototypical example. At its peak in 1950, the City of St. Louis was home to almost 1 million residents compared to its present population of 280,000. St. Louis single-family homes constructed after WW II through the end of the 1950s in areas like Maplewood, Wellston, Overland, etc. are now wearing out all at once, hitting the point where they are not appealing to most new home buyers, regardless of race.

The same conundrum exists in Akron, Ohio. Jason Segedy, director of the Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study, a regional planning organization stated, “These first-generation suburban houses are getting old and they were never really houses that had any character. Now they are perceived as small in relation to their new "McMansion" cousins in the exurbs, and the heating and plumbing and roofs are getting to the age where they have to be updated. But no one wants to take on that cost when they have so many other choices."

A similar scenario is plaguing Cleveland, Ohio. Jason Segedy went on to say, “Here in the Cleveland area, you can look at Euclid and Garfield Heights and see the houses are not old enough to be completely decrepit and vacant yet, but most of them are not owner-occupied anymore — they are rentals that are getting crappier and crappier over time because they are aging and it is not economically viable to rehab them. You can see where 20 years from now how this housing too will be abandoned just as is occurring with the inner-ring suburbs."

“It’s never happened like this before in this country,” he says.

[suxs]

Only if you don't know the difference between Ehrlich's work being used to claim the Great Dieoff by the end of the 1980s and the McPeakster Doom claimed for 2005 on Thanksgiving day.

Time for clarification. For starters, Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 The Population Bomb provided a FORECAST that was presented as "likely scenarios". Nowhere in the text is PREDICT used. His primary focus on the global population nailed it. At the time his book was published, the global population was 3.5 billion. Today the population is near 8 billion AND global resource consumption continues to grow exponentially as the global population aspires to a standard of living equal to that of the average US citizen. And, while the timing may be off, his mention of the greenhouse effect, along with a sound and expansive analysis of ecosystem degradation, pollution, and the fragility of industrial agriculture are more true today than ever before.

It is an undeniable fact that the world needs a wake-up call. The world is on an exponential growth curve leading to complete unsustainability on almost all fronts. From population to food production, we have exceeded the sustainable consumption cap.

For those who are pinning all hope on technology to save the day, Fred Guterl, a writer at Scientific American, makes the point that innovation won’t be able to save us from the effects of population explosion. Accordingly, “the cycle of innovation needs to increase in frequency as the size of the population increases”. Though we make new discoveries every day, our population is increasing at an exponential rate that cannot possibly be matched by innovation."

The result: No meaningful action will be taken to reverse desertification, coral reef bleaching, ocean acidification, soil erosion, oceanic dead zones, deforestation, mass species extinctions, over-fishing, drought, water shortages, population, over-consumption, a breakdown of the intricate web of life, etc.

No action will be taken until catastrophe greets us on a personal level, but by then it will be too late. I recently returned from the Amazon and I can personally testify that the forests are being bulldozed, burned, and chainsawed at a furious rate. There is nothing stopping the land barons and agri-business enterprises except meagerly armed native people. However, when an indigenous group becomes too troublesome the entire clan is murdered by hired assassins from Brasilia or Bogota or Quito, etc. The bulldozer opens a large pit where the bodies are dumped and it's back to business as usual. The entire region was suffering from an unrelenting and vicious drought. These morons are too greedy to recognize that they're cutting their own throat. By removing the forest, the evaporative process by which moisture develops into rain no longer exists. Even now, some areas of what was once lush rainforest is being transformed into dry savannah.

He who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind.

[Newfie]

The longer we prolong our population explosion, the steeper the descent later.

There are elements to a population explosion:

1. They allow for more exploitations of resources.
2. They give some resilience to local situations.
3. Our technology explosion seems to have been a result of it, too and certainly benefits from it.

The down side:

1. Eventually, critical resources will make themselves felt and peak oil certainly being one of them at the top of the list.
2. Eventually, we destroy our habitat, as we are currently doing and, maybe, that's even more significant than peak oil.
3. The nature of logarithmic growth was already outlined by the Club of Rome, which I believe is still considered accurate.

Of course, you like to cherry pick only singular 'The End is Nigh' overzealous Cassandras.

This is a good short explanation. You remind me I just read a review of some new work retreading the LTG models. It seems the new work reconfirms a lot of what LTG said, the number of possible scenarios has been whittled to 2 or 3. None good. It was very depressing.

Ah, here. KPMG work.
https://www.clubofrome.org/blog-post/he ... rld-model/

[vtsnowedin]

Though we make new discoveries every day, our population is increasing at an exponential rate that cannot possibly be matched by innovation."

.

That is no longer true.To be exponential the rate of increase the X exponent has to remain constant. The human population X is declining and has dropped from 1.08% in 2019 to 1.0% in 2022 projections.

Year

Population Growth Rate

Growth Rate
2022
7,953,952,567
1.00%
2021
7,874,965,825
1.03%
2020
7,794,798,739
1.05%
2019
7,713,468,100
1.08%

[AdamB]

Only if you don't know the difference between Ehrlich's work being used to claim the Great Dieoff by the end of the 1980s and the McPeakster Doom claimed for 2005 on Thanksgiving day.

Time for clarification. For starters, Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 The Population Bomb provided a FORECAST that was presented as "likely scenarios". Nowhere in the text is PREDICT used. His primary focus on the global population nailed it.

More research Suxs. The Great Dieoff wasn't an Ehrlich claim from the Population Bomb, it was his prognostication around Earth Day 1970 in the first issue of the Progressive.Apparently quantified the dieoff for Americans as well, 65 million fo us were going to die, and 4 billion folks at large. Between 1980 and 1989.

Hows that for clarification from those of us who really have researched yet another doomer doing what doomers do?

He who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind.

And silly McDoomsters making predictions for the end of the world had better make sure A) they die before that time comes and they begin the backpedaling phase of looking the idiot or B) the timeframe is far enough out in the future not to make them look the fool..and after they die.

So Ehrlich arrives in the same bucket of half wits as Harold Camping, having discredited his reasonable idea with a specific application that only an academic with way more ego than sense can do. And lands in the same idiot McDoomster bucket as Ruppert, who a book that was popular about 9/11, did the same kind of prognoticating of silly outcomes, became doomer famous, and ran the same route when it came to ending his credibility. As though his personal issues weren't enough, right?

Just as I explained earlier.

[suxs]

The human population X is declining and has dropped from 1.08% in 2019 to 1.0% in 2022 projections.

A presentation limited to the annual change in population growth rates fails to explain why the absolute increase of the population per year has remained relatively constant at between 81 and 83 million for the past twenty-seven years. The answer is despite marginal decreases in the growth rate, net population growth remains UNCHANGED since 1995 due to the absolute growth in world population. In 1995 the global population increased by 83.4 million and in 2020 the global population increased by 81.4 million despite a global pandemic. Absent COVID, population experts predicted a 2020 growth of 83.4 million. Finally, future population predictions have notoriously underestimated the actual results in order to present a more sanguine future scenario and we all know the past is prologue.

We also know consumption patterns have a far larger impact on the quality of the environment than population growth. For example, the US Energy Information Agency projects world energy consumption will grow by nearly 50% from 2018-to 2050. Statista projects an average global consumption growth rate of 4.1% for plastics between 2018 and 2050. In other words, the global consumption of plastics will DOUBLE every 17 years!!! Global cement consumption is doubling every 20.5 years. Lumber consumption is doubling every 21 years. Steel and paper doubling is occurring every 25 years.

I don't see how your comment disputes the analysis performed by Scientific American.

[jedrider]

Evidently, the Club of Rome prognostications gets updated.
https://medium.com/the-bad-influence/were-on-track-for-the-global-collapse-predicted-by-the-club-of-rome-in-1972-6771887ae009

I'm with their worst case scenario which still has plenty of time to play out (at least for us > 50 yo group -- I think I'm being kind there).

Really, could anyone (except Adam) believe their 'optimistic' scenario with World population stabilizing and everyone working together to achieve that? What hallucinations under the guise of rational determination.

[vtsnowedin]

The human population X is declining and has dropped from 1.08% in 2019 to 1.0% in 2022 projections.

A presentation limited to the annual change in population growth rates fails to explain why the absolute increase of the population per year has remained relatively constant at between 81 and 83 million for the past twenty-seven years. The answer is despite marginal decreases in the growth rate, net population growth remains UNCHANGED since 1995 due to the absolute growth in world population. In 1995 the global population increased by 83.4 million and in 2020 the global population increased by 81.4 million despite a global pandemic. Absent COVID, population experts predicted a 2020 growth of 83.4 million. Finally, future population predictions have notoriously underestimated the actual results in order to present a more sanguine future scenario and we all know the past is prologue.

We also know consumption patterns have a far larger impact on the quality of the environment than population growth. For example, the US Energy Information Agency projects world energy consumption will grow by nearly 50% from 2018-to 2050. Statista projects an average global consumption growth rate of 4.1% for plastics between 2018 and 2050. In other words, the global consumption of plastics will DOUBLE every 17 years!!! Global cement consumption is doubling every 20.5 years. Lumber consumption is doubling every 21 years. Steel and paper doubling is occurring every 25 years.

I don't see how your comment disputes the analysis performed by Scientific American.

What you are describing is a steady growth which is not exponential as you called it in your first post. A big difference there.
Then there is the fact that the actual rate is decreasing now at 79 million a year.
Also we can not in the future increase or double consumption of products that don't exist. You can not double the consumption of plastics without increasing the production of oil. You can not increase consumption of energy beyond how much we manage to increase supply. We can not increase lumber consumption beyond that rate of growth in the forests or eat more fish then the oceans can produce.
Just like bacteria growing in a petri dish stop doubling when they reach the edge of the dish and the end of the food base they are growing on we will stop consumption increases when we reach the limits of what we are consuming.

[Pops]

I don't take any short term slump in births during a pandemic, insurrection, war, etc to be indicative. But longer term, you need a plateau before you have a peak.



But also in the long run, falling concentrations of every resource require increasing energy to acquire. We are going to need increasing amounts of a variety of ores to replace fossils. here is a paper. That paper concludes that all the additional fossils burned will increase greenhouse gases, of course ignoring peak oil.

Which, like the original IPCC reports, take unlimited fossils for granted, here is a Peaker's paper on GW & PO.

Even the latest from EIA says peak demand can be in 2025 if only governments act. But demand shows no sign of peaking, the price proves it. Governments show no sign of acting to limit fossils, they are struggling to placate Putin in EU so they don't freeze right this minute.

We're rushing to 10 or 12 billion humans, depleting every possible resource along the way. The best case is a drastic decline in births that allow natural deaths to catch up and reduce the population to match the depleted resource base. There is only one other possible scenario.

[AgentR11]

I don't know about this delipidated thing; at least here, urban cores are getting a lot of attention. Not to say that blight isn't still around, but compared to ten years ago or so.. definite improvement.

[jedrider]

Let's just be optimistic about these scenarios with a steep population decline:

As time goes on, less people will be dying once we're on the downslope!

[vtsnowedin]

I don't take any short term slump in births during a pandemic, insurrection, war, etc to be indicative. But longer term, you need a plateau before you have a peak.



But also in the long run, falling concentrations of every resource require increasing energy to acquire. We are going to need increasing amounts of a variety of ores to replace fossils. here is a paper. That paper concludes that all the additional fossils burned will increase greenhouse gases, of course ignoring peak oil.

Which, like the original IPCC reports, take unlimited fossils for granted, here is a Peaker's paper on GW & PO.

Even the latest from EIA says peak demand can be in 2025 if only governments act. But demand shows no sign of peaking, the price proves it. Governments show no sign of acting to limit fossils, they are struggling to placate Putin in EU so they don't freeze right this minute.

We're rushing to 10 or 12 billion humans, depleting every possible resource along the way. The best case is a drastic decline in births that allow natural deaths to catch up and reduce the population to match the depleted resource base. There is only one other possible scenario.

The chart you posted shows a decline in population growth starting a couple of years ago. I don't know as the decline will be as steep as the projections plotted but I do expect a decline not further growth.
Of course other projections do show steady growth as far out as we can see but they assume huge amounts of growth in sub Saharan Africa where I thing resource limits will be reached sooner rather then later.
I do expect by 2040 I will not care about the problem or be part of it.

[Pops]

The chart is of net increase, not total. The total continues to increase through 2099 in the UN medium estimate. Hopefully the increase slows faster, if that makes sense, LOL.

By yeah, 2040 I'll likely have contributed to the solution as well.

[Newfie]

We're rushing to 10 or 12 billion humans, depleting every possible resource along the way. The best case is a drastic decline in births that allow natural deaths to catch up and reduce the population to match the depleted resource base. There is only one other possible scenario.

Well said.

I wonder what percent of current adult population understands this. Would be interesting to see that broken out by country.