Chicken little from a different angle....

[ddoubleez]

Our greatest downfall of mankind may be the understanding of exponential growth... This is a very simple concept that, when applied properly, will yield the product of future growth..

Lets talk about a unit of time and steady growth...

You will see this applied directly to population, water consumption, energy consumption, and economic growth, which are all directly linked....

In my thread I would like to talk about a fixed growth rate and a fixed amount of time... You are already thinking that things do not grow at a fixed rate..... You are correct, kind of.... You can look at the economy for the past two decades and see fluctuations, however, to keep things simple you can say that the average growth for the past two decades is two percent... You can take that average and go to a case by case basis and see a little deviation, but the end product is a fixed growth of 2 percent.....

The above does not sound like much, and I would agree there too.... HOWEVER, if you look at doubling time at the rate of two percent things change.... To calculate doubling time, you take the two percent growth and multiply it into 70... This will give you the doubling time.... 70 divided by 2 will give you the doubling time of 35 years.....

This could help you understand that an economy that is growing at a modest rate of 2 percent will double in 35 years..... You could argue that that is not that much either... If I live to see the age of seventy, I would see this substandard growth double twice in my lifetime, correct? No...... True, at 35 I would have seen a doubling of the economy, but the next 35 years the economy size or GDP would quadruple in size relative to the economy you were born into.... If you lived to 105 you would see an economy that was the equal of 16 economies that I was born into....

If I lived to the age of 107 I would see the economic gains in those two years that is more than equal to the entire economy that I was born into.....

Lets switch gears..... If I were Chinese and I was born in 1994 I would be 14, so too young for you perverts! :-) And I would live in an economy that saw more than 10 percent growth every year of my life..... Lets divide 70 by 10 and get the doubling time of 7 years... This would mean that the economy I was born into was 25% the size of the economy that I am in now...... If I lived to be 28 in the year of 2022, my economy would grow to an ecomony that is 16 time the size that I was born into.....

Now lets us apply this to the growth rate of population.... If you took ANY species and give them an unlimited supply of basics, food water and energy they will grow in population at a nearly fixed rate.....

Now, lets take a beaker of bacteria and give it a cracker soaked in oj that would feed 50000 bacteria and the beaker would hold just a little more than this...... The gestation of a bacteria would be 1 minute for shits and grins, you can argue this and I am not a biologist, but the accuracy here is not important for the point..... We will say that midnight we had one bacteria.... 12:01 we would have two...

12:02 we would have four..
12:03 we would have 8....
12:04 we would have 16.....
12:05 we would have 32....
12:06 we would have 64....
12:05 we would have 128....
12:06 we would have 256....
12:07 we would have 512..
12:08 we would have 1024...
12:09 we would have 2048...
12:10 we would have 4096... Here the bacteria look around and see their success and understand they have room and food for 45000 more bacteria and rejoice..
12:11 we would have 8200..
12:12 we would ahve 16400....
12:15 we would have 33000 and the bacteria would look around and say we have lived 15 generations and only used half our food and space.... Some alarmists bacteria, however look around and launch a space ship and colonize 19 other beakers dividing the population into the population they had 5 minutes ago...

All 20 beakers would have a population 1650....
12:16 we would have a population of 3300...
12:17 we would have 6600....
12:18 we would have 13200..
12:19 we would have 26400...
and at 12:20 we have 1,040,000 starved and dead bacteria...

At 12:15 the bacteria escaped extintion by finding TWENTY TIMES THE RESOURCES they had and it bought them 4 more minutes, or an increase 1/5 of their entire time by increasing their habitate by TWENTY TIMES......

If we applied the above to fuel consumption and realize we have used half the reserve, what time would it be if we were on the time line above....

MORE TO COME!

[joerockhead]

First of all, if you are 14, you are not too young!!!

Second - you are posting something that is not on anyones minds and they do not want to really think to deeply about this, as it will become a major world crisis in the not too distant future.

Third - I am glad I am older then most of you, so I can die at a decent age, just before the whole world collapses into chaos!!!!

[ryster]

You don't seem to be factoring in the death of older people. Most humans in the world probably don't live much past their 60's (especially factoring in 3rd world/war-torn countries where the life expectancy is well below 50). Population only grows when a couple births more than one child that survives to maturity (and some might argue that a given human only counts as a population addition when it reproduces).

Also, you didn't consider that most consumable resources are rebuilt/synthesized/grown by humans. Really the only major limited resources are fossil fuels and other energy-related substances, but god knows it won't take long for the scientists to crack the code on those and have us using plasma powered cars or something crazy like that...they haven't yet because there isn't enough money in the picture, not because it's impossible or beyond our technological reach.

I tend to think that if the human race is going to die before we get off Earth, it's going to be from nuclear war or something along those lines, not lack of fundamentals. This is a big, big planet, and we haven't even come close to tapping half of its natural resources. I mean, if you took all the people on the planet, moved them over to Asia, and packed them in as tightly as people live in Mumbia or Seoul, we probably wouldn't even cover half of Asia.

We've got plenty of room to grow, plenty of resources to consume, and plenty of great minds to put towards making humanity eternal.

[joerockhead]

Ryster, maybe you should review your info.

Oil is one limited quantity, as stated. Same as Natural Gas. Same as Coal.

Maybe the US population is not growing tremendously by birth rates, but many other countries are. India, China, Russia. And they are growing and needing many more resources.

Another item of limited amounts is land. You have to have it to grow food on, to allow for animals and for homes. Livable and usable lands are slowly being depleted.

What about water? We need to for the crops and for people to consume, and for many other things.

It is going to get interesting in the next 20 years. :mstad:

[JenniferJuly]

This is cracking me up!

I loved that movie though! LOL!

[fmb]

'Sup, Deez! Glad to see you posting!!

The presentation of numbers is very related to the skyrocketing increase in the number of us humans on this planet. Sometimes, it makes me a little nervous thinking about what some humans will do to other humans when their portion of available, land, food, waters, and other resources become insufficient to support them.

Maybe this is why I'm scared of math.

[ddoubleez]

We've got plenty of room to grow, plenty of resources to consume, and plenty of great minds to put towards making humanity eternal.

First, thanks for the rep and the post...

We have to disagree with the above statement, however.... 48% of biomass producing land is allocated for farming....

More than 75% of fresh water in north America is used every year for farming, and it is not a renewable resource when combined with synthetic fertilizers....

We are half way through our proven reserves of oil.....

All available steel has been purchased, every year in this century....

There are no rivers left to dam....

The past 100 years has seen an average of 7.5% growth rate in population, which nearly matches the growth rate of fossil fuel use.....

This is why oil companies will tell you it took 100 years to burn up the 1st half of our oil and we have 30 years left, exponential growth.......

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[Juan.Camaney]

48% of biomass producing land is allocated for farming....
Does this include the hydroponic way of doing things? You know, where land isn't necessary?

More than 75% of fresh water in north America is used every year for farming, and it is not a renewable resource when combined with synthetic fertilizers....
You mean the reclaimed water that was already marked as not for human consumption?

We are half way through our proven reserves of oil.....
You mean the proven reserves that is all we have, including the huge oil field they just found in Brazil AGAIN in the recent few days?

All available steel has been purchased, every year in this century....
Damnit! Too bad we don't have other means to reinforce stuff like carbon fiber and junk...


There are no rivers left to dam....
...and there I was working for the Army Corps of Engineers in the project meant to take dams down...

The past 100 years has seen an average of 7.5% growth rate in population, which nearly matches the growth rate of fossil fuel use.....
Which also means humans are living longer which might mean that the quality of life is improving...

This is why oil companies will tell you it took 100 years to burn up the 1st half of our oil and we have 30 years left, exponential growth.......
Right, cuz if they knew they were running out of oil they would be banking their future on cars like the Camaro the rock was advertising over on BOTH.

[ddoubleez]

Does this include the hydroponic way of doing things? You know, where land isn't necessary?

1) This is a method of farming that takes oil to produce the metal that is spun into the median, then the pumps take lots of energy to run the system for the water that is pumped in, then synthetic (fossle fuel based) fertilizer is used with the water to feed the plants. In addition that have to be spread out put on something to be exposed to the sun, surface area is an indication of dependance of land...

You mean the reclaimed water that was already marked as not for human consumption?

2)No, I misspoke, 75% of potable water... You need to realize that you should not make a habbit of eating plants that are not grown in water that is not fit for consumption, anyway. The spinach and pepper echoli problems were from water that was washed through a feed area...

Also, too, you problem solves the sewage problem, until it becomes to expensive to run this system... Next, the problem it solves, is only a drop in the bucket, compaired to the growing need for water... Again, refer to the chicken little tread above, and try to understand at the half way point of an exponentially increasing need.

You mean the proven reserves that is all we have, including the huge oil field they just found in Brazil AGAIN in the recent few days?

3)If you have had anytime devoted to learning about the subject, you love to argue about, you would know that 'proven' reserves are DRASTICLY overstated, because of opecs export policy...


There are doubts about the reliability of official OPEC reserves estimates, which are not provided with any form of audit or verification that meet external reporting standards.[22]

Since a system of country production quotas was introduced in the 1980s, partly based on reserves levels, there have been dramatic increases in reported reserves among Opec producers. In 1983, Kuwait increased its proven reserves from 67 Gbbl (10.7×109 m3) to 92 Gbbl (14.6×109 m3). In 1985-86, the UAE almost tripled its reserves from 33 Gbbl (5.2×109 m3) to 97 Gbbl (15.4×109 m3). Saudi Arabia raised its reported reserve number in 1988 by 50%. In 2001-02, Iran raised its proven reserves by some 30% to 130 Gbbl (21×109 m3), which advanced it to second place in reserves and ahead of Iraq. Iran denied accusations of a political motive behind the readjustment, attributing the increase instead to a combination of new discoveries and improved recovery. No details were offered of how any of the upgrades were arrived at.[23][22]
The following table illustrates these rises.


Damnit! Too bad we don't have other means to reinforce stuff like carbon fiber and junk...

4)VERY EXPENSIVE, so no substitute.... In addition, carbon has been increasing in value faster than steel, because more people are already using it.


...and there I was working for the Army Corps of Engineers in the project meant to take dams down...


5)Rivers no longer empty into the sea, in many cases, because of how many dams are already on them... If you add a dam in one spot, you will loose power down stream... Hydro electric power is VERY profitable now, and people would be building dams before solar, if they wanted to make money... So if we are investing into solar and wind, dams are tapped out on a large scale.


Which also means humans are living longer which might mean that the quality of life is improving...


6)No, it means if you understood my chicken little thread, you would understand we double our needs every 7 fucking years and, very soon something we dont want to happen is going to stop that, and it will not be fun to live through.

I have pointed out, numerously, that that expectation for life is DECREASING in the US as well, world poverty and diese is increasing and starvation and absense of water is also increasing.

Right, cuz if they knew they were running out of oil they would be banking their future on cars like the Camaro the rock was advertising over on BOTH.

7)no it just means that one of the things that has doomed us, is our strength to avoid or deny that that threatens us, but is out of our controll... In addition, entire car companies have been dropping like flys.

We are in serious denial of numerous truths, and we all know it.


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[Juan.Camaney]

FAIL! Send me a pm if you are having trouble with the code, brah.