50 years of history and 50 years of future - The Limits to Growth in a long-term perspective

[@blackmass7882]

I think mister Randers too optimistic when he said collapse can be prevented with extraordinary effort. This level of effort world needed 50 years ago, and today SW is impossible, world went out of the limits before I born in 1992. So how can we talking about sustainability when we are totally unsustainable? Sust-ty = 1,0 Earth (or less, economic growth = destroying of biosphere potential). And not 1,8 Earth. 1,8 - 0,8 = collapse-scale reduction of human enterprise. BAU (peak 2015-2025). TINA. Any damn way, I proud for Randers, Meadows, Gaya Herrington etc. Really great people. And yes, it's crying shame. 779 views. My №780. Hi from Ukraine.

[@AlignmentCoaching]

Yes it’s a shame. 3 comments (now 4). The world will sink much like the Titanic, with folks holding onto their delusions as if that will save them. And hello Ukraine, from Singapore.

[@markcounseling]

I pray for you and all Ukrainians. Am sending food too.

[@Grizabeebles]

The aside near the end of the video about a predicted 5 degree Celsius temperature rise is a global disaster in and of itself. If one looks at the IGCC climate report on what a world 4 degrees warmer will look like, most of the world will become an inhospitable desert and the only temperate regions will be Canada and Russia. Check out the KZbin channel "Real Life Lore" and the video "a world 4 degrees warmer" if you prefer video essays.

[@AlignmentCoaching]

All studies I’ve seen or heard about don’t indicate a drop in temps because fossil fuel use slows down. Reinforcing feedback loops and the life of carbon (and methane) indicate a continuing increase in temps after fossil fuel stops

[@michaels4255]

Models=GIGO. Evidence does not support that temps are being driven by CO2. That is assumption, not conclusion. And obviously any methane that did not get released during the Holocene Thermal Max will certainly not get released now either! Only activists driven by a political agenda could ignore something so obvious. Or morons.

[@em945]

@@michaels4255 you have been reading those fake websites again havent you.

[@michaels4255]

@@em945 I don't know what "fake websites" you refer to. Everyone who is the least bit geologically literate (which apparently does not include you) has heard of the Holocene Thermal Maximum. It is standard mainstream science. And the Vostok ice core clearly shows that it is temperature that drives CO2 and NOT the other way around, at least at levels that have prevailed for most of earth's history. This is all published in mainstream scientific journals. It is logical that CO2 AT VERY LOW LEVELS would raise temps because it can trap light of a particular wave length, but current levels, even though they are still low in terms of geologic history, are high enough that astronomers can observe that the light is almost entirely saturated so that there is no more light of that spectrum for additional CO2 to absorb. It is the sunlight, not the CO2 itself, that creates the so called green house effect. Since we cannot increase the amount of light of that spectrum that is emitted by the sun each day, we cannot increase the earth's temperature by emitting more CO2. I think the difference between AGW skeptics/deniers and AGW True Believers, is that True Believers have sky high deference for authority figures, while skeptics and deniers look at the data and think things over for themselves. The latter tend to be critical thinkers while the former tend to be easily bedazzled by status markers.

[@munyansebastien7127]

@@michaels4255 Couldn't help noticing your affection for antisemitic and racist rants (like this one: kzbin.info/www/bejne/q3qQp6h5Ytqlhrs ). Perhaps that's what you mean by "critical" thinking.

[@michaels4255]

@@munyansebastien7127 If you want to have a a serious discussion on an appropriate site about history, sociology, and the heritability of psychological characteristics which vary between populations, I would be willing to oblige you, but it is totally irrelevant to the climate related comments I made in this thread, which are factual, accurate, and published in reputable scientific journals. Your most recent riposte amounts to saying, "You have expressed unpopular and controversial views about other subjects, and that proves you must be wrong about everything you say." Surely even you can realize the irrationality of such "reasoning." While it is true I hold some carefully considered opinions that, while completely centrist back in the fifties (I mean the 1850s), have since fallen out of popular favor, the political centrism of the Victorian Age is no less credible than the political centrism of the post 1960s West. Change is not a synonym for progress.

[@em945]

I think the pollution feedback is going to be one of the greatest issues. An unwell ecosystem will not tolerate the pressure. I am sitting right in the middle of it with my family's farmland in Australia having its water systems poisoned by ignorant bullies upstream on all sides. The governing bodies are weak willed. It's so sad.

[@HappyBelly10]

00:21:04 is where Prof Randers talks about what we can do to prevent the decline : 1) shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy 2) agriculture sustainable & lower meat consumption 3) developmental models for poor countries 3) equity - rich pay most of bills 5) lower population

[@faze0ne844]

how can we shift to renewable energy when it creates more CO2 to create one damn battery for an electric car , come on idiots ! get your head our of your arse , its all a scam , lets get rid of the globalists that runs this world , and probably runs this guys pay check .. and EVERYTHING will be fine ..

[@georgenelson8917]

Not going to happen because of stupid greedy tribal human nature. We will fly the airplane into the mountain rather then give up capitalism ( fossil fuel industrial consumers) and making babies . Enjoy it while you can

[@dr.chrisperry7757]

Excellent talk

[@andy199121]

Can I get this right, This earth4 model is assuming renewable technologies come online to replace fossil fuels? If that doesn’t happen then bau/bau2 is still most likely?

[@Grizabeebles]

Yes. Check out Gaya Herrington's analysis using real-world data that she did while working at MIT. To whatever degree the most influential people in the world have paid to this problem, it seems that they have decided to put the bulk of humanity's resources behind achieving "comprehensive technologies". If global civilization fails at this, then the result is a closest fit to the Bau2 scenario. I also recommend the work of Nate Hagens. Contemporary economics only takes into account the energy and resources *available to humans*. It doesn't concern itself with the idea that once earth's resources are "fully exploited", the only direction left is a massive upward price spiral and economic collapse.

[@richardallan2767]

Our gift and our curse is we are basically a frontal cortex slapped on the top of usual animal drives to breed, expand and use all available resources, like the rest of life. But we think we aren't this. Indeed we are lost in thought. So this wonderful ability to understand cause and effect, to predict outcomes isn't really a lot of good because, on the whole, we still can't choose to do different from what our conditioning drives us to do. We just "think" we are choosing.

[@richardallan2767]

But yeah, we can get beyond this. Just requires a level of individual and collective insight, discipline and evolution never before seen in history. No problem

[@mrjonno]

Dear Jorgen. First of all a great pleasure and respect to 'meet' you as co-author to the premise in 1972 that should have been. My great concern is that 'economics', perhaps, as an ideology to explain and solve is far too general and excludes 'externalities' and cultural bias... Furthermore, progressive economists would explain that infinite growth on a finite ecosphere for terrestrial resources where we understand to have near infinite energy abundance is not pursuant to GDP in any sense... I absolutely agree with you regarding democracy to realise our dilemma. My conclusion too, if we are to make a paradigm change to Kardashev 1. As long a we discuss our world in financial trends we have a problem.

[@oshevireonofe9670]

Great insight and point of view that opens a lot of angles for discussion. Given limitations of time, knowledge and other unseen forces it is however a good study and forecast. Good not perfect! Good work Sir!

[@sentientflower7891]

It must be admitted that should civilization hold itself together and avoid collapsing until 2040 that is the most optimistic scenario except that the pollution generated from 2022 - 2040 just means that the cliff on the other side steeper.

[@zeamaiz945]

Collapse asap

[@rowaneisner6802]

So why will a call to action be more effective this time?

[@winstongludovatz111]

9:33, pollution levels: the graph shows CO2 data dramatically below all forecasts. How does this justify the attending commentary according to which CO2 is rising "perhaps a little fatser than forecast"?

[@janklaas6885]

12:45

[@response418]

My take on what I just saw and listened to. Someone that got every prediction wrong, except for the stagnation of growth in living standard(and this due to policies push based on all the failing predictions), is saying the faulty model and approach is sure to work for future predictions. My suggestion is taking ones failures into account and grow, not double down on the failures to make more of them and get more policies implemented that ruins society for everyone.

[@vsotofrances]

Renewables are based on fossil fuels,....so it is just, in the best scenario, like using the brakes to avoid collapse before a new ers starts. Also forget about fiat money ..

[@EranHertz]

So our best hope is to move from neoliberalism-feudalism to eco-fascism world goverment. Either way, everyone living today can count on every year getting worse until they die. But if you try to talk about this to anyone they call you an alarmist. Maybe the metaverse will save us.

[@holopod]

The Earth 4 model seems to forecast a decline in population (related to higher living standards) and an almost mirrored increase in wellbeing. Somehow it seems not to take into account the huge negative socio-economic effects of a colossal inverted global population pyramid. Our social healthcare and welfare systems are built on the same model as a Ponzi scheme (I don't want to claim they hold similar intents, obviously!) and once the influx of new members (or providers) into that scheme sinks below a given minimum, it starts to collapse. I can't see how that scenario could correlate with social wellbeing. Also, the plot seems very much focused on human metrics, and the "earth" as a whole (after which it's ironically named) seems only represented in "observed global warming", which is just a small fraction of our planet's problems and in fact just a symptom of the overarching issue: Overshoot. So, why isn't there more focus on resource depletion and resulting pollution in the graph shown? If GDP keeps indeed increasing till 2080, these must be serious enough issues to address, as they eventually will lead to collapse anyhow and topple the argument that we as a species can somehow, with huge effort, steer the ship out of the coming storm.

[@michaels4255]

I strongly dispute that warming is a problem. COOLING is a problem. Warming makes survival easier. Just look at the historical record. Compare the GISP2 ice core with the ups and downs of civilization. Activists have the climate threat totally upside down. A hundred years ago, when far fewer people were second generation or later urbanites, this was universally understood. Now we have more data to confirm it than they did, yet the narrative has been turned around in defiance of both data and experience. At the risk of making it too complex, I think the model needs to account for cyclical climate change which occurs naturally with an adverse weighting for cooling periods which inevitably recur, to treat energy and minerals as separate factors, to include depleting ground water as a separate factor, to focus specifically on endocrine disruptors rather than pollution in general, and to incorporate declining general intelligence (which reduces adaptive capacity and is associated with much higher rates of social dysfunction), and political instability related to ethnic diversity. The global debt burden will also be a factor which inhibits adaptation, but I don't know whether it can be modeled realistically or not. Also, interlocking "networks of networks" increase the risk of collapse, but again I don't know whether we understand how to make them work in the model. And overconcentration of the population in giant urban centers far from essential supplies, the complexity and fragility of global supply chains, and decaying infrastructure that requires energy to repair and maintain. I know you can't model everything, but we should be aware that these other interacting factors make the risk of catastrophe considerably greater than even the model suggests.

[@wickedleeloopy2115]

More people need to pay more attention to this. Population control is not necessarily an evil thing.

[@kiedranFan2035]

Compress that graph by min 20yrs maybe change the trajectories too because there is no cooperation and people only care about their bottom lines. Personally and are probusiness not procollective

[@P4nDA_pls]

So few views... I guess I havr to go to business as usual.

[@Rnankn]

Single most relevant topic to view. I wonder if it’s the humans, or the algorithm?

[@A3Kr0n]

We haven't managed to gather popular support for strong government action in the last 50 years so I won't assume we will during the next. It's business as usual all the way down to the bottom of the cliff.

[@Happy5559]

Earth for All!

[@Ptaku93]

21:57 lmao, that would only exacerbate the decline. What a short-sighted thing to say!

[@Hadi-zw9mb]

Great analysis. Is positive feedback in climate change added to this model?

[@aristotlechange1424]

SOS... necesitamos un cambio en nuestra sociedad en todo el mundo, no necesitamos crecimiento económico, no necesitamos todos los alimentos que se ofrecen en los supermercados, no necesitamos múltiples ejércitos, solo necesitamos uno para reprimir todas las guerras. ¿No necesitamos viajar por todo el mundo? No necesitamos minar bosques y mares vírgenes. No necesitamos riqueza, mira al monje shaolin. Podemos tener un cielo sobre la tierra y aun así explorar el universo por dentro y por fuera. Sigue esto y todo estará bien. Guardián verde

[@CJ-yk4sn]

Yall fail to see that any situation that fixes this means killing massive amounts of ppl either by starvation or force

[@melodyfarm]

sorry but this is hope dealing... the time is now

[@lambertoazzi7883]

Great... Let's all reduce CO2 emissions and the "next 50 years" will surely become much shorter... I'm pretty sure that it will not even be necessary to reach the 150ppm threshold.

[@lauravo3355]

Yay a clear call to action: our mission is to reach agreement

[@richardford9321]

What, are we back to predictions again? None of the fearmonger scenarios have been the least bit accurate. Why should we heed yet another doomsday prediction based on nothing but speculation.

[@michaels4255]

I am disappointed in the quality of this analysis. He is diverting attention from the most serious problems by focusing on the global warming boogeyman. In fact, both history and prehistory consistently indicate that a warmer world would be a better world, as would a world with more CO2 regardless of temperature. Unfortunately, temperature fluctuations in the last hundred years are almost entirely explained by natural phenomena which man has no control over, and after the high solar activity of the late 20thh century, a cooler phase of the climate appears to be developing, which is bad, very bad. Cooler, not warmer, temps are associated with more erratic and extreme weather both statistically over historic and prehistoric time and for reasons that are well understood in meteorology. Unfortunately, cyclical climate change is a very important factor that is omitted from the model. Randers says food production has increased, which is true, but fossil fuels are what has made that possible, which he fails to mention. He also says that fossil fuels are much more plentiful than we expected 50 years ago, but I do not believe the evidence supports that at all. It is extremely unlikely that we will discover vast new reserves of minerals to make the green economy daydreams a reality. ESG advocates consistently ignore the immensity of mineral resources to make their green sci fi dreams come true, just as they ignore EROI issues (which may be partially offset but do not go away simply by building more PV cells and wind turbines, even if we had enough minerals to scale up as much as needed). Innovation per capita has been declining since the late Victorian Age, and the "capita" part will soon be falling as well. He mentions that fertility is down, but ignores that the decline is concentrated in the educated classes which, given the known high heritability of intelligence, will further reduce innovation as well as good decision making in positions low and high, and greatly increase the amount of social dysfunction in society. The biggest falls in fertility are in the social classes and ethnic groups that produce almost all of our adaptive innovations. He also does not mention the ongoing effects of endocrine disruptors on both wild animal and human health and fertility. I suppose that is one way to reduce the population, but it is a very cruel way, and it may collapse the population at such a catastrophic rate at some point that it adds to the problems. But the model seems to have been shifted to vastly overweight CO2 while vastly underweighting endocrine disruptors. He also ignores social factors during the collapse, one of the biggest of which is ethnic diversity which throughout history has repeatedly provided the lines of conflict within states along which the population split, not infrequently erupting into internal warfare, as we have seen in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Ukraine, and Afghanistan to name some of the most high profile examples of the last 30 years. I checked Jorgen Randers' bio and he made his career in big business and apparently, like many persons of influence in western countries, has been on the payroll of the growth mad CCP since 2019 (wikipedia: "In 2019, Randers was appointed as inaugural co-chair of the Ecological Civilization Center at Peking University's Research Institute of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era"). He may be soft pedaling the dangers, consciously or unconsciously, for these reasons. A public message of impending tragedy does not play well with the monied interests.

[@matijabl]

I dont care about this old fart, but found your comment interesting. How can one know gw is boogieman? Mammals survived ice age before, it is easier to warm up than to cool down. Louis Pasteur stuf on my mind, it does not have to boil, just prolonged elevated temp and you get a nice clean sterile planet. Check out moist greenhouse self arrest... It seems it is warming pretty quickly here on earth, but what do I know, i like to do things with my hands and hot seems to bother me more than cold. I dont like cold either but its easily fixed with a log in grate.

[@michaels4255]

@@matijabl "How can one know gw is boogieman?" It fits the definition: a greatly exaggerated or imaginary threat (originally Napoleon Bonaparte, "the Boneyman" which became Boogieman) used to scare children or other gullible persons. "Mammals survived ice age before," Many of them had to migrate to survive, resulting in ecological configurations strikingly different from those we know today, and some of them did not survive. The onset of ice age conditions is frequently accompanied by extinctions. Populations expand their numbers and ranges under warmer conditions (such as the tripling of the polar bear population during the late 20th century warming), precipitation increases, and deserts shrink. Storms also become less severe. (Hurricanes may or may not be an exception to this rule. There were certainly some very big ones during cool periods. SST may not be the only factor that affects them.) All this stuff goes in reverse when the climate gets cooler. "it is easier to warm up than to cool down." Look at the data. Way more cold related deaths even in routine winters than there are heat related deaths during severe summer heat waves that make national or international headlines. Yet only heat related deaths get media attention, while the much greater cold related deaths are ignored. "Louis Pasteur stuf on my mind, it does not have to boil, just prolonged elevated temp and you get a nice clean sterile planet." If that were true, the Amazon rain forest would be sterile! It never gets cold there, elevated temperatures all year round. The truth is that life on earth thrives wherever liquid water is abundant and sufficient minerals are present (some parts of the ocean have low mineral content and thus low populations). Geologists tell us that for about half the history of life on earth, temperatures were 8.5C (15F) degrees warmer than today. Warmists are trying to scare us with the alleged threat of a 2 degree C temperature rise (we should wish for it!) although it is well known in geology that temps were already 2 to 3 degrees C warmer during the Holocene Thermal Maximum around 8000 years ago. The entire period of elevated temperatures lasted between 3 and 4 thousand years and is also called the Holocene Thermal Optimum. Our ancestors were still in the stone age, but agriculture expanded rapidly, animals were domesticated and crops improved, early cities thrived and the first preliterate states appeared. No record of whether they were wringing their hands in anxiety over the "threat" of melting permafrost and methane outgassing. If you look for an image of temps derived from the GISP2 Greenland ice core, you will see that civilization thrived during warm periods but that the coldest periods correspond with the Bronze Age collapse and subsequent Dark Age, the fall of the West Roman Empire and the subsequent Dark Age, the "calamitous 14th century" as Barbara Tuchman called it and general troubles that marked the end of Medieval civilization, although we skirted another dark age because of new technologies and new crops (especially the potato). "Check out moist greenhouse self arrest... It seems it is warming pretty quickly here on earth" You would certainly think so from listening to scientifically illiterate journalists, politicians, and celebrities, none of whom ever verify or investigate their sources, but the reality is that the warming was concentrated in the 1980s and 1990s and since circa 2000 there has been very little change in temperature in either direction. "I dont like cold either but its easily fixed with a log in grate." And how do you cope with crop failures and food shortages? Historians estimate world population contracted about 10% during the Dalton Grand Solar Minimum and about 25% during the earlier Maunder Minimum (when the first English settlers arrived in North America).

[@matijabl]

@@michaels4255 thank you for your reply. It is much inline with 'geological perspectives of climate change' paper i read some time ago. All those self proclaimed fake scientists want me to believe that the rate of change is at least the order of magnitude greater than the evolutio is able to cope with and i personally dont buy that. I dont buy your reasoning either. I am bored and afraid of death, i want something big and intetesting to happen in my lifetime, i guess i want to see the earth burning so i could justify my procrastination and antisocial behaviour. The thing is im only half ironic, the other half must be the pure evil and nihilism and frustration.

[@michaels4255]

@@matijabl "I dont buy your reasoning either." -- I don't know your age, but if you have enough years left on earth, I think you will buy my reasoning eventually. Personally, I have never wanted anything "big and interesting to happen in my lifetime," but I keep getting disappointed! Heck, just in the last 22 years, I have lived through 3 different "once in a lifetime" economic crises (dot com collapse, great financial crisis, and the covid collapse). Those are all way more "big and interesting" than I want! I would very much prefer to live in a stable and predictable world, but that is not our age. Just by looking at the data, it is not hard to see the handwriting on the wall. "Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin," our age has been weighed in the balances and found wanting. It is only "continuity bias" that prevents people from accepting the obvious. When you connect all the dots and just believe what you see, it's an "oh, crap!" moment.

[@matijabl]

@@michaels4255 being trough yugoslav war those big 3 of yours seem minor, expected and incidential, almost laughable. Personally been partying hard for a decade before covid and retreated to log cabin during lockdown, had the best time of my life... But look at the data, have you seen the graphs, can you concieve the rate of change in the natural world. Have you been silent and observant. I can not claim for sure but it is getting more extreme year after year. Both on data and in what i can observe locally. Some say melting of the ice caps is gonna take thousands of years, some say couple of decades, but once the ice is gone we wont necesarily be in a cozy world but rather in a unseen mess. This is how i sometimes feel about it. And i could be totaly and utterly wrong. If so, my apollogies.