Sunday, August 3, 2008

Don’t blame the Chinese

For the last couple of years I have been following the unfolding of history with concern. Now I am scared. After the movie “An inconvenient truth” I thought that the world is in a difficult situation. I learned more about how it is possible to overcome it and the only way would be a shift in human consciousness and awareness. Human will and cooperation are needed at all levels to solve environmental problems before it’s too late. How likely is that? I believe it’s very unlikely.

Few days ago I had the proof that humanity is in an even bigger jeopardy. I am not talking here about the regular problems like energy crisis, financial crisis, or other wrongs like war or bad education. No. It’s about what could lead to the End Game. The main character is overpopulation leading to resources depletion. Oh, so boring, so many have cried “Wolf!” before. It ain’t gonna happen! Not in our life time. Well, I hoped so too, but you should see this video by prof. Albert Bartlett and think about the implications.

It is a video explaining the consequences of exponential growth. It’s very easy to understand it and he gives relevant examples. He pinpoints the real problem that we are facing, that is, overpopulation. Right now we have a lot more problems than that, and all the problems are hard ones. Pay attention especially to the bacteria example and the mathematical truth that the amount needed for the doubling is bigger than the sum of all previous steps.

Video 1 Video 2 Video 3 Video 4 Video 5 Video 6 Video 7 Video 8

It is also important to remember what he says: “We cannot trust other people to do our thinking for us”. So I started to think. These assertions are quite scary and were made a few years ago. Dr. Bartlett also said “Don’t take my word for this – check my analysis, do the math!”. So I did the math, and it wasn’t too hard at all…

I found the statistics from 2007 and made some calculations to see where we are at. I used the global figures because we are in a global economy.

Exhausting time is: Te = 1/k * ln[(k*R/p)+1]
where: p = consumption/year, R=reserves, k=growth rate

And tada! The results:



I was shocked! OMG! He is right. Certainly, the future doesn’t look rosy.

If we look at the World energy usage chart, it is obvious that a lot of work has to be done. 85% of the energy is obtained from fossil fuels. Have you noticed the sharp increase of coal consumption to replace oil? It doesn’t help avoiding global warming, for sure.

Now I understand why there is an energy crisis. It is not because Chinese bought over a million cars or because there is war in middle-east. The reason is that we are running out of gas…

There is some good news too. First, Europe is a leader in decreasing the usage of fossil fuels. Last year was a modest 2% decrease or so, but exponential growth works the other way around too. Second, USA knows about this problem. They have a report about it (Hirsch report – Feb. 2005). I don’t see too many signs of action, though.

Actually, the Americans are still arguing about when the peak oil production “will” occur. They also don’t realize that peak oil production is not the middle of the journey, but the last mile. It’s important to grasp the mathematical fact that half of a finite resource is consumed during the last doubling.

If all the nations stopped increasing their fossil fuel usage right now, and started decreasing it a little every year, the time needed to achieve independence from fossil fuels is the following:



How likely is that, considering world population growth and developing countries with huge populations like China and India? Is it possible to go from a 2.6% average growth to at least a 2% decrease, so that the transition will be smooth enough? Europe shows us that it can be done. Is there enough political will for this in the rest of the world?

If you understand that the extraction of fossil fuels won’t increase exponentially and will end abruptly, then you will understand that many years of crisis are ahead. I am telling you: over the next years, things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

This is it. It’s the biggest challenge for the human race. We are at 30 seconds before high noon. What are we going to do? Go shopping to appease our anxiety? Tune out the dreadful news and tune in to the next distraction? Or take the problem seriously and get prepared to face it?

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