Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on February 5, 2015
As Night Closes In
I was saddened to learn a few days ago, via a phone call from a fellow author, that William R. Catton Jr. died early last month, just short of his 89th birthday. Some of my readers will have no idea who he was; others may dimly recall that I’ve mentioned him and his most important book, Overshoot, repeatedly in these essays. Those who’ve taken the time to read the book just named may be wondering why none of the sites in the peak oil blogosphere has put up an obituary, or even noted the man’s passing. I don’t happen to know the answer to that last question, though I have my suspicions.
I encountered Overshoot for the first time in a college bookstore in Bellingham, Washington in 1983. Red letters on a stark yellow spine spelled out the title, a word I already knew from my classes in ecology and systems theory; I pulled it off the shelf, and found the future staring me in the face. This is what’s on the front cover below the title:
carrying capacity: maximum permanently supportable load.
cornucopian myth: euphoric belief in limitless resources.
drawdown: stealing resources from the future.
cargoism: delusion that technology will always save us from
overshoot: growth beyond an area’s carrying capacity, leading to
crash: die-off.
If you want to know where I got the core ideas I’ve been exploring in these essays for the last eight-going-on-nine years, in other words, now you know. I still have that copy of Overshoot; it’s sitting on the desk in front of me right now, reminding me yet again just how many chances we had to turn away from the bleak future that’s closing in around us now, like the night at the end of a long day.
Plenty of books in the 1970s and early 1980s applied the lessons of ecology to the future of industrial civilization and picked up at least part of the bad news that results. Overshoot was arguably the best of the lot, but it was pretty much guaranteed to land even deeper in the memory hole than the others. The difficulty was that Catton’s book didn’t pander to the standard mythologies that still beset any attempt to make sense of the predicament we’ve made for ourselves; it provided no encouragement to what he called cargoism, the claim that technological progress will inevitably allow us to have our planet and eat it too, without falling off the other side of the balance into the sort of apocalyptic daydreams that Hollywood loves to make into bad movies. Instead, in calm, crisp, thoughtful prose, he explained how industrial civilization was cutting its own throat, how far past the point of no return we’d already gone, and what had to be done in order to salvage anything from the approaching wreck.
As I noted in a post here in 2011, I had the chance to meet Catton at an ASPO conference, and tried to give him some idea of how much his book had meant to me. I did my best not to act like a fourteen-year-old fan meeting a rock star, but I’m by no means sure that I succeeded. We talked for fifteen minutes over dinner; he was very gracious; then things moved on, each of us left the conference to carry on with our lives, and now he’s gone. As the old song says, that’s the way it goes.
There’s much more that could be said about William Catton, but that task should probably be left for someone who knew the man as a teacher, a scholar, and a human being. I didn’t; except for that one fifteen-minute conversation, I knew him solely as the mind behind one of the books that helped me make sense of the world, and then kept me going on the long desert journey through the Reagan era, when most of those who claimed to be environmentalists over the previous decade cashed in their ideals and waved around the cornucopian myth as their excuse for that act. Thus I’m simply going to urge all of my readers who haven’t yet read Overshoot to do so as soon as possible, even if they have to crawl on their bare hands and knees over abandoned fracking equipment to get a copy. Having said that, I’d like to go on to the sort of tribute I think he would have appreciated most: an attempt to take certain of his ideas a little further than he did.
The core of Overshoot, which is also the core of the entire world of appropriate technology and green alternatives that got shot through the head and shoved into an unmarked grave in the Reagan years, is the recognition that the principles of ecology apply to industrial society just as much as they do to other communities of living things. It’s odd, all things considered, that this is such a controversial proposal. Most of us have no trouble grasping the fact that the law of gravity affects human beings the same way it affects rocks; most of us understand that other laws of nature really do apply to us; but quite a few of us seem to be incapable of extending that same sensible reasoning to one particular set of laws, the ones that govern how communities of living things relate to their environments.
If people treated gravity the way they treat ecology, you could visit a news website any day of the week and read someone insisting with a straight face that while it’s true that rocks fall down when dropped, human beings don’t—no, no, they fall straight up into the sky, and anyone who thinks otherwise is so obviously wrong that there’s no point even discussing the matter. That degree of absurdity appears every single day in the American media, and in ordinary conversations as well, whenever ecological issues come up. Suggest that a finite planet must by definition contain a finite amount of fossil fuels, that dumping billions of tons of gaseous trash into the air every single year for centuries might change the way that the atmosphere retains heat, or that the law of diminishing returns might apply to technology the way it applies to everything else, and you can pretty much count on being shouted down by those who, for all practical purposes, might as well believe that the world is flat.
Still, as part of the ongoing voyage into the unspeakable in which this blog is currently engaged, I’d like to propose that, in fact, human societies are as subject to the laws of ecology as they are to every other dimension of natural law. That act of intellectual heresy implies certain conclusions that are acutely unwelcome in most circles just now; still, as my regular readers will have noticed long since, that’s just one of the services this blog offers.
Let’s start with the basics. Every ecosystem, in thermodynamic terms, is a process by which relatively concentrated energy is dispersed into diffuse background heat. Here on Earth, at least, the concentrated energy mostly comes from the Sun, in the form of solar radiation—there are a few ecosystems, in deep oceans and underground, that get their energy from chemical reactions driven by the Earth’s internal heat instead. Ilya Prigogine showed some decades back that the flow of energy through a system of this sort tends to increase the complexity of the system; Jeremy England, a MIT physicist, has recently shown that the same process accounts neatly for the origin of life itself. The steady flow of energy from source to sink is the foundation on which everything else rests.
The complexity of the system, in turn, is limited by the rate at which energy flows through the system, and this in turn depends on the difference in concentration between the energy that enters the system, on the one hand, and the background into which waste heat diffuses when it leaves the system, on the other. That shouldn’t be a difficult concept to grasp. Not only is it basic thermodynamics, it’s basic physics—it’s precisely equivalent, in fact, to pointing out that the rate at which water flows through any section of a stream depends on the difference in height between the place where the water flows into that section and the place where it flows out.
Simple as it is, it’s a point that an astonishing number of people—including some who are scientifically literate—routinely miss. A while back on this blog, for example, I noted that one of the core reasons you can’t power a modern industrial civilization on solar energy is that sunlight is relatively diffuse as an energy source, compared to the extremely concentrated energy we get from fossil fuels. I still field rants from people insisting that this is utter hogwash, since photons have exactly the same amount of energy they did when they left the Sun, and so the energy they carry is just as concentrated as it was when it left the Sun. You’ll notice, though, that if this was the only variable that mattered, Neptune would be just as warm as Mercury, since each of the photons hitting the one planet pack on average the same energetic punch as those that hit the other.
It’s hard to think of a better example of the blindness to whole systems that’s pandemic in today’s geek culture. Obviously, the difference between the temperatures of Neptune and Mercury isn’t a function of the energy of individual photons hitting the two worlds; it’s a function of differing concentrations of photons—the number of them, let’s say, hitting a square meter of each planet’s surface. This is also one of the two figures that matter when we’re talking about solar energy here on Earth. The other? That’s the background heat into which waste energy disperses when the system, eco- or solar, is done with it. On the broadest scale, that’s deep space, but ecosystems don’t funnel their waste heat straight into orbit, you know. Rather, they diffuse it into the ambient temperature at whatever height above or below sea level, and whatever latitude closer or further from the equator, they happen to be—and since that’s heated by the Sun, too, the difference between input and output concentrations isn’t very substantial.
Nature has done astonishing things with that very modest difference in concentration. People who insist that photosynthesis is horribly inefficient, and of course we can improve its efficiency, are missing a crucial point: something like half the energy that reaches the leaves of a green plant from the Sun is put to work lifting water up from the roots by an ingenious form of evaporative pumping, in which water sucked out through the leaf pores as vapor draws up more water through a network of tiny tubes in the plant’s stems. Another few per cent goes into the manufacture of sugars by photosynthesis, and a variety of minor processes, such as the chemical reactions that ripen fruit, also depend to some extent on light or heat from the Sun; all told, a green plant is probably about as efficient in its total use of solar energy as the laws of thermodynamics will permit.
What’s more, the Earth’s ecosystems take the energy that flows through the green engines of plant life and put it to work in an extraordinary diversity of ways. The water pumped into the sky by what botanists call evapotranspiration—that’s the evaporative pumping I mentioned a moment ago—plays critical roles in local, regional, and global water cycles. The production of sugars to store solar energy in chemical form kicks off an even more intricate set of changes, as the plant’s cells are eaten by something, which is eaten by something, and so on through the lively but precise dance of the food web. Eventually all the energy the original plant scooped up from the Sun turns into diffuse waste heat and permeates slowly up through the atmosphere to its ultimate destiny warming some corner of deep space a bit above absolute zero, but by the time it gets there, it’s usually had quite a ride.
That said, there are hard upper limits to the complexity of the ecosystem that these intricate processes can support. You can see that clearly enough by comparing a tropical rain forest to a polar tundra. The two environments may have approximately equal amounts of precipitation over the course of a year; they may have an equally rich or poor supply of nutrients in the soil; even so, the tropical rain forest can easily support fifteen or twenty thousand species of plants and animals, and the tundra will be lucky to support a few hundred. Why? The same reason Mercury is warmer than Neptune: the rate at which photons from the sun arrive in each place per square meter of surface.
Near the equator, the sun’s rays fall almost vertically. Close to the poles, since the Earth is round, the Sun’s rays come in at a sharp angle, and thus are spread out over more surface area. The ambient temperature’s quite a bit warmer in the rain forest than it is on the tundra, but because the vast heat engine we call the atmosphere pumps heat from the equator to the poles, the difference in ambient temperature is not as great as the difference in solar input per cubic meter. Thus ecosystems near the equator have a greater difference in energy concentration between input and output than those near the poles, and the complexity of the two systems varies accordingly.
All this should be common knowledge. Of course it isn’t, because the industrial world’s notions of education consistently ignore what William Catton called “the processes that matter”—that is, the fundamental laws of ecology that frame our existence on this planet—and approach a great many of those subjects that do make it into the curriculum in ways that encourage the most embarrassing sort of ignorance about the natural processes that keep us all alive. Down the road a bit, we’ll be discussing that in much more detail. For now, though, I want to take the points just made and apply them systematically, in much the way Catton did, to the predicament of industrial civilization.
A human society is an ecosystem. Like any other ecosystem, it depends for its existence on flows of energy, and as with any other ecosystem, the upper limit on its complexity depends ultimately on the difference in concentration between the energy that enters it and the background into which its waste heat disperses. (This last point is a corollary of White’s Law, one of the fundamental principles of human ecology, which holds that a society’s economic development is directly proportional to its consumption of energy per capita.) Until the beginning of the industrial revolution, that upper limit was not much higher than the upper limit of complexity in other ecosystems, since human ecosystems drew most of their energy from the same source as nonhuman ones: sunlight falling on green plants. As human societies figured out how to tap other flows of solar energy—windpower to drive windmills and send ships coursing over the seas, water power to turn mills, and so on—that upper limit crept higher, but not dramatically so.
The discoveries that made it possible to turn fossil fuels into mechanical energy transformed that equation completely. The geological processes that stockpiled half a billion years of sunlight into coal, oil, and natural gas boosted the concentration of the energy inputs available to industrial societies by an almost unimaginable factor, without warming the ambient temperature of the planet more than a few degrees, and the huge differentials in energy concentration that resulted drove an equally unimaginable increase in complexity. Choose any measure of complexity you wish—number of discrete occupational categories, average number of human beings involved in the production, distribution, and consumption of any given good or service, or what have you—and in the wake of the industrial revolution, it soared right off the charts. Thermodynamically, that’s exactly what you’d expect.
The difference in energy concentration between input and output, it bears repeating, defines the upper limit of complexity. Other variables determine whether or not the system in question will achieve that upper limit. In the ecosystems we call human societies, knowledge is one of those other variables. If you have a highly concentrated energy source and don’t yet know how to use it efficiently, your society isn’t going to become as complex as it otherwise could. Over the three centuries of industrialization, as a result, the production of useful knowledge was a winning strategy, since it allowed industrial societies to rise steadily toward the upper limit of complexity defined by the concentration differential. The limit was never reached—the law of diminishing returns saw to that—and so, inevitably, industrial societies ended up believing that knowledge all by itself was capable of increasing the complexity of the human ecosystem. Since there’s no upper limit to knowledge, in turn, that belief system drove what Catton called the cornucopian myth, the delusion that there would always be enough resources if only the stock of knowledge increased quickly enough.
That belief only seemed to work, though, as long as the concentration differential between energy inputs and the background remained very high. Once easily accessible fossil fuels started to become scarce, and more and more energy and other resources had to be invested in the extraction of what remained, problems started to crop up. Tar sands and oil shales in their natural form are not as concentrated an energy source as light sweet crude—once they’re refined, sure, the differences are minimal, but a whole system analysis of energy concentration has to start at the moment each energy source enters the system. Take a cubic yard of tar sand fresh from the pit mine, with the sand still in it, or a cubic yard of oil shale with the oil still trapped in the rock, and you’ve simply got less energy per unit volume than you do if you’ve got a cubic yard of light sweet crude fresh from the well, or even a cubic yard of good permeable sandstone with light sweet crude oozing out of every pore.
It’s an article of faith in contemporary culture that such differences don’t matter, but that’s just another aspect of our cornucopian myth. The energy needed to get the sand out of the tar sands or the oil out of the shale oil has to come from somewhere, and that energy, in turn, is not available for other uses. The result, however you slice it conceptually, is that the upper limit of complexity begins moving down. That sounds abstract, but it adds up to a great deal of very concrete misery, because as already noted, the complexity of a society determines such things as the number of different occupational specialties it can support, the number of employees who are involved in the production and distribution of a given good or service, and so on. There’s a useful phrase for a sustained contraction in the usual measures of complexity in a human ecosystem: “economic depression.”
The economic troubles that are shaking the industrial world more and more often these days, in other words, are symptoms of a disastrous mismatch between the level of complexity that our remaining concentration differential can support, and the level of complexity that our preferred ideologies insist we ought to have. As those two things collide, there’s no question which of them is going to win. Adding to our total stock of knowledge won’t change that result, since knowledge is a necessary condition for economic expansion but not a sufficient one: if the upper limit of complexity set by the laws of thermodynamics drops below the level that your knowledge base would otherwise support, further additions to the knowledge base simply mean that there will be a growing number of things that people know how to do in theory, but that nobody has the resources to do in practice.
Knowledge, in other words, is not a magic wand, a surrogate messiah, or a source of miracles. It can open the way to exploiting energy more efficiently than otherwise, and it can figure out how to use energy resources that were not previously being used at all, but it can’t conjure energy out of thin air. Even if the energy resources are there, for that matter, if other factors prevent them from being used, the knowledge of how they might be used offers no consolation—quite the contrary.
That latter point, I think, sums up the tragedy of William Catton’s career. He knew, and could explain with great clarity, why industrialism would bring about its own downfall, and what could be done to salvage something from its wreck. That knowledge, however, was not enough to make things happen; only a few people ever listened, most of them promptly plugged their ears and started chanting “La, la, la, I can’t hear you” once Reagan made that fashionable, and the actions that might have spared all of us a vast amount of misery never happened. When I spoke to him in 2011, he was perfectly aware that his life’s work had done essentially nothing to turn industrial society aside from its rush toward the abyss. That’s got to be a bitter thing to contemplate in your final hours, and I hope his thoughts were on something else last month as the night closed in at last.
The Archdruid Report by John Michael Greer
58 Comments on "As Night Closes In"
sunweb on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 7:36 am
One of the great ones.
paulo1 on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 8:01 am
Terrific article.
Davy on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 8:19 am
Great JMG read. He covers much in a short pitch.
“The Book Overshoot and JMG first exposure to it 1983”
A great Book I read in 05.
“I noted that one of the core reasons you can’t power a modern industrial civilization on solar energy is that sunlight is relatively diffuse as an energy source, compared to the extremely concentrated energy we get from fossil fuels.”
A good point for the ecologist corns deception of a Green BAU.
“A human society is an ecosystem. Like any other ecosystem, it depends for its existence on flows of energy, and as with any other ecosystem, the upper limit on its complexity depends ultimately on the difference in concentration between the energy that enters it and the background into which its waste heat disperses”
I would just like to mention human complexity is not necessarily related to complexity from energy and knowledge. There are Native American cultures and the Kogi Indians of Columbia that have a complexity in earth ecosystem relationship that is far higher than any modern energy based complexity with energy intensity, knowledge, and technology. I would argue that modern complexity in reality quickly hits limits and diminishing returns as its complexity increases and the separation of man’s connection to the all-important earth ecosystem increases. This separation into an existential duality (nature or man) creates lower actual human spiritual complexity and long term survival hence less complexity.
Would it not be better to say a real definition of complexity is the human connection to the natural complexity that offers man the longest survivability in evolutionary terms? Is not man’s current knowledge, technology, and social complexity an evolutionary dead end that leaves us nothing more than what could be termed Bottleneck Man? Is not the highest level of complexity on our planet the natural complexity? Can man ever top natural biological complexity and the amount of energy that system can produce and utilize? I say no and I say modern man is a low order species that fits nature’s niche as an extinction species for evolutionary purposes. That is not saying much for us as exceptional quite the contrary.
dave thompson on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 9:04 am
Good points Davey, the self and other is the basis of our economic system doomed to failure, going on as we speak. The information is not hard to grasp, the hard part is the dominant culture narrative, coupled with the cushy lives we live.
Plantagenet on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 9:28 am
If we’re not at overshoot now we’ll be at overshoot soon
Northwest Resident on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 9:47 am
In 1983 I bought a Mustang GT and proceeded to burn a lot of fuel as I cruised the beaches and mountains of SoCal. I remember having a moment of sudden concern and I mentioned to my best friend, an electrical engineer graduated from M.I.T. and a very smart guy, that I was worried there might not always be enough gas to put into my beautiful hotrod. To which he replied, “We’ll never run out of gas.”
I wonder where he is now, and if he has changed his mind.
It blows me away to realize that these peak oil and overshoot issues that I have become so aware of over the last year and a half, but suspected all along, were actually well known and actively contemplated back in 1983. If I could have only had the moment of clarity back in 1983 that I had a year and a half or so ago, realizing that this civilization was headed toward a certain head-on collision with finite limits, I’m sure my life between then and now would have been much different.
Anybody got a time machine???
ghung on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 10:01 am
Plant: “If we’re not at overshoot now we’ll be at overshoot soon..”
All indicators that matter prove we’re in overshoot, have been for some time:
Declining aquifers worldwide;
loss of essential topsoil worldwide;
declining fisheries worldwide;
ocean acidification worldwide;
loss of species (mass extinction) worldwide;
increasing CO2 levels worldwide….
I could go on, but don’t see the point. Not sure what you need to make your personal determination Plant, but I think I figured this out well before Catton ever published Overshoot. We’re fouling our nest on an immense scale. That spells O-V-E-R-S-H-O-O-T.
Plantagenet on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 10:36 am
@ghung
A species is in overshoot when it’s population exceeds the carrying capacity of its environment, resulting in a population crash.
Human population continues to grow.
This means Homo sapiens is not yet in overshoot. Perhaps we’ll be in overshoot soon
Get it now?
Cheers!
GregT on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 11:02 am
@plant,
Overshoot is the period of time when the population continues to grow in excess of the carrying capacity of the natural environment. We are in mass overshoot right now, and the longer the overshoot continues, the greater the crash will be.
When the crash occurs we will no longer be in overshoot.
Get it now? Didn’t think so.
Cheers.
ghung on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 11:03 am
I get that you’ve redefined overshoot for yourself. That we’ve been able to cheat overshoot in clever ways using unnatural systems doesn’t mean we’re not there. Indeed, that our population continues to grow even as our natural systems are in decline, is an example of a species going even deeper into a state of overshoot. We’ve been stealing from our species’ future for decades.
Your little snapshot of growing population is short-sighted; indicative of your lack of understanding of time-based phenomena. If you are using your resources faster than you can replace them, you are in overshoot; a process as well as a condition, one that necessitates a die-off.
Do you really think our planet can continue to support 7.3 billion humans, even if population stops growing?
Rodster on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 11:21 am
“When the crash occurs we will no longer be in overshoot.”
Well said, LOL
Rodster on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 11:25 am
Plant reminds me of the MadTV character Ms. Swan who told the flight attendant. “Come on lady you believe what you see”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6e25sqD_WA
Plantagenet on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 11:28 am
@ghung
You are having a fantasy. I didn’t “redefine” overshoot. I’m using the standard definition of overshoot.
The definition of overshoot is: ” In population dynamics and population ecology, overshoot occurs when a population exceeds the long term carrying capacity of its environment. The consequence of overshoot is called a crash or die-off.”
Your claim that humans are “cheating” overshoot is silly. Animal populations can’t “cheat” overshoot. Overshoot is inevitable for humans, just as it is for every other species.
Cheers!
Plantagenet on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 11:31 am
@Rodster
You remind me of a typical American who can’t do math. When animal populations hit overshoot, the population crashes.
Human population is not crashing, ergo we have not reached overshoot.
Do the math—human population is still growing.
Human population is still ADDING people. When we hit overshoot, human population will stop growing.
Get it now?
GregT on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 11:37 am
Plant,
Are you completely devoid of intelligent rational thought? Or simply an annoying little troll?
After reading your above comments I’m not so sure anymore.
Davy on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 11:43 am
Rodstar that was some funny stuff man thanks
Davy on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 11:45 am
Planter, you know I like you but your definition of overshoot sounds like it came out of Alice and Wonderland. Have you been reading children’s books lately?
Rodster on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 11:49 am
Yeah Ms Swan is the best. 🙂
@Plant, yeah I’m good at math. I still rely on 1+1=2. I guess your version must be 1+1=12.
Revi on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 11:57 am
The scariest message from his book is the fact that populations in overshoot usually dip below their previous carrying capacity and stabilize at a tiny fraction of their peak. That means we’ll be lucky if we humans even survive this one.
Revi on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 11:58 am
Excellent article!
Plantagenet on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 12:02 pm
Rodster
Its great that you can add 1 + 1. Congratulations. I’m sure you are very proud of your wonderful math skills.
[ahem]
But global population involves somewhat bigger numbers. The current world population is about 7.5 billion. Scientists predicted in a recent paper in the journal SCIENCE that global population will reach about 12 billion people by 2100.
http://www.wired.com/2014/09/human-population-2100/
Think about it. If humans are in overshoot right now, then how are we going to add another 4.5 billion people in the next 85 years? I can hear ghung chiming in with the silly claim that humans are “cheating” but population dynamics don’t work that way.
Either a population is in overshoot or it isn’t. The fact that the human population is still growing and is set to grow by billions of people in coming decades indicates we are not yet in overshoot.
Cheers!
Ron Patterson on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 12:07 pm
Plant wrote: “A species is in overshoot when it’s population exceeds the carrying capacity of its environment, resulting in a population crash.
Human population continues to grow.
This means Homo sapiens is not yet in overshoot.”
That is about the dumbest thing I have read recently. A species does not have to be already in the die-off stage to be in overshoot. Overshoot is when a species has a population above the long term carrying capacity of that species.
Watch Rat Attack: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/rat-attack.html
“Once every 48 years, bamboo forests in parts of northeast India go into exuberant flower. Then, like clockwork, the flowering is invariably followed by a plague of black rats that appear to spring from nowhere to spread destruction and famine in their wake.”
The rat population goes from less than a hundred per acre to several thousand per acre during the fruiting of the bamboo. Then soon all the bamboo fruit is gone and the rats die-off. The rats were in overshoot long before all the bamboo fruit was gone.
That is the same case with humans. We are already well past the long term carrying capacity of the earth. Our bamboo fruit is well over half gone already.
Rodster on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 12:11 pm
Rodster
“Its great that you can add 1 + 1. Congratulations. I’m sure you are very proud of your wonderful math skills.”
I kept it simple so even you could understand it.
Northwest Resident on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 12:15 pm
Ron — Some people do dumb very well, and all too frequently.
Plantagenet on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 12:15 pm
@Rodster
And I kept my reply simple so you could understand. But evidently I didn’t make it simple enough.
Cheers!
GregT on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 12:19 pm
Is there not somebody that can ban this jack-ass once and for all? Enough is enough.
Apneaman on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 12:23 pm
Plant is a necrophiphi felcher.
Plantagenet on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 12:32 pm
Apneaman is a dope.
Perk Earl on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 12:38 pm
“We are in mass overshoot right now, and the longer the overshoot continues, the greater the crash will be.”
Absolutely true. One of the things Catton wrote about was ‘phantom capacity’, in which we use resources as if they are unlimited.
Plantagenet on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 12:52 pm
@Perk Earl
If we are in overshoot, then why doesn’t human population crash?
Davy on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 1:04 pm
AP, that some bad stuff man but it made me laugh.
Planter, systematically we are in a state of disequilibrium to the normal and natural carrying capacity that was present for most of our species history. I would say this is the first time carrying capacity has been extended so far from the normal and natural and in a fragile stable disequilibrium. We have created a human ecosystem that relies on energy intense efficiency within complexity. This exposes us to multiple contagion perturbations both internal and external that reduce economies of scale that further reduce complexity putting us at risk of cascading failures of complex human production, distribution, and network controls. IOW a regular shit storm of our own making.
It has been proposed we were in a bottleneck situation roughly 70,000 years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory. Since then there has been no carrying capacity breaches globally only locally. That die off was geologic.
We are faced with an essential calorie source that is in decline. This calorie source requires complexity to be converted into a food calorie source and a mechanical source for increased complexity. This complexity is nearing limits and suffering the beginnings of diminishing returns. Diminishing returns to complexity is the end game for a complex system in stable disequilibrium. Complexity and energy intensity of our species cannot decline without a die off. There is simply not enough potential calories for 7.5BIL people without growing oil production and oils increasing utilization into a food source by complexity.
So Planter this is a demand destruction oil glut carrying capacity overshoot event. You got it now?
Cheers
Don on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 1:14 pm
((4*9)+(5*4))^2
(36+(5*4))^2
(36+25)^2 <— point error was made
61^2
3721 <— incorrect result
You are in overshoot when the inevitable outcome is going to be a crash. Just like you have made an error if the result you will get is wrong in a calculation not when you get the result.
Unless there is a black swan out there waiting to save us we are in an overshoot currently because the resources we have available will not be able to maintain the size of the current population.
Anyway, I kind of look at it as being a localized thing. Los Angeles California is probably in overshoot, however, butthole Montana is probably gonna be alright.
GregT on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 1:15 pm
Davy,
Try using smaller words.
Plantagenet on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 1:22 pm
Daver
I think you are confusing the common English word “overshoot” with the scientific use of the word “overshoot”.
The word overshoot in common English means to exceed or go beyond. Everyone knows what that word means.
But science often uses words in rather specific ways: ” In population dynamics and population ecology, overshoot occurs when a population exceeds the long term carrying capacity of its environment. The consequence of overshoot is called a crash or die-off.”
In other words, scientifically you can’t have overshoot in a population without a population collapse. They are ipso facto linked.
Cheers
PS: So—-why is human population still growing?
Plantagenet on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 1:24 pm
And Daver—
Don’t bother using smaller words just so GregT can understand.
GregT on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 1:43 pm
The International Society for Ecological Economics
The Population Overshoot Factor in Ecological Economics
Posted on September 23, 2014
We were delighted by the clear consensus that emerged at the end of the Iceland conference, that population size and growth is one of the major factors in assessing the sustainability of economies and societies, which should be taken into account. As an aid to doing so, we attach the current Overshoot Index. This is a simple extrapolation for population size from the data of the (Kenneth Boulding Award-winning) Global Footprint Network. No-one, of course, claims that the figures are precise. Indeed, by omitting non-renewables and biodiversity, they may overstate sustainable populations. But as a rough guide to orders of magnitude, not least of the scale of the overshoot problem, we believe they could be of use to ISEE members.
http://www.isecoeco.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Overshoot-Index-2014-v2.pdf
Don on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 1:48 pm
Alright I think I get what you are trying to say now Plant. You cannot be certain that you are in overshoot until that population begins to collapse. I think everyone is inferring what you mean is that the point of overshoot is the point of collapse. What people are saying is that the point of overshoot comes when you have passed the point of equilibrium and the population will run out of the resources it needs thus making a population collapse imminent.
Davy on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 1:51 pm
Not the way I read it Planter, “the consequence of which” does not mean the actual event has to happen to be a “quid pro quo” just that there is a consequence of the potential for a die off. A population can exceed carrying capacity and manage to negotiate that breach without a die off.
We are doing that now by harvesting our ecosystem of nonrenewable resources and over harvesting renewable resources such that the ecological carrying capacity is going into deficit. The breech has not actuated a die off but the potential is there currently. We are in a dynamically unstable situation which is very sensitive to a fold bifurcation from a small forcing i.e. a threshold is crossed and we cascade to a new state in this case much lower economic activity.
There is a ecological deficit and that deficit is increasing. Our ecological overshoot is part of our carrying capacity overshoot. There are other issues involved in carrying capacity like the human elements of civilization that allow large concentrations of people to survive.
Is that clear or is that like your brick wall glut obsession?
cheerie-bye
GregT on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 2:03 pm
“In population dynamics and population ecology, overshoot occurs when a population exceeds the LONG TERM carrying capacity of its environment.”
Long term does not mean the present, it refers to some point off in the future.
“The CONSEQUENCE of overshoot is called a crash or die-off”
Consequence:
the effect, result, or outcome of something occurring earlier
Again, the effect, result, or outcome of the current population overshoot, in the LONG TERM, will be a die off.
Plantagenet on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 2:09 pm
Don
I so much appreciate your thoughtful comment.
Yes—science is based on facts and data, not suppositions and unproven claims.
In population ecology, you can tell a population is in overshoot because it goes into collapse. Until the population goes into collapse you can’t tell it is in overshoot. The two things are linked.
The human population is not collapsing. In fact it is still growing. Catton published his book “Overshoot” in 1980. Since then population has grown by perhaps 2 billion people. And human population still continues to grow.
Will human population start to collapse in 20-30 years as the book “Limits to Growth” predicted in 1972? Perhaps. But it sure as heck isn’t collapsing now.
Cheers!
GregT on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 2:25 pm
“You cannot be certain that you are in overshoot until that population begins to collapse.”
You can be certain that you are in overshoot, when you are ALREADY consuming renewable resources faster than they can replenish themselves, and your population continues to grow.
We are currently consuming resources at a rate of 1.5 times the rate at which they are replenishing themselves. Every single ecosystem on the planet is in a state of decline, and as our population continues to grow exponentially, those ecosystems will continue to decline exponentially. The CONSEQUENCES of overshoot will be a future die off of our species, the further we continue to overshoot the natural carrying capacity of the Earth, the larger the die-off will be in the LONG TERM.
This isn’t rocket science people. This is something that a 10 year old should be able to understand.
MSN Fanboy on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 3:14 pm
Cheers…
Using Plants sly insults against him, cheers.
Cheers…
Plant the system is in disequilibrium regarding ITS NATURAL CAPACITY.
THE OTHER COMMENTATORS USE THE BENCHMARK FOR OVERSHOOT AS WHAT THE PLANET CAN HANDLE NATURALLY, I.E. NO FF.
YOU ARE BENCHMARKING THE COLLAPSE AS OVERSHOOT, YOURE DESCRIPTION OF OVERSHOOT IS FALSE. YOURE DESCRIBING THE CORRECTION TO OVERSHOOT, NOT THE OVERSHOOT ITSELF.
Davy on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 3:18 pm
Planter, come on man, this is common sense son. Your bank account may be overdrawn but the bankruptcy may not be for a year. You are in a financial overshoot of your income level but not yet bankrupt.
In your example planter were does a collapse start? Who is the collapse referee? Are we in long term, short term, hard, soft and or extinction event? You are being a gluthead planter? I enjoy our intellectual sparing but I think it is in discussions overshoot to normal intelligence levels.
Perk Earl on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 3:21 pm
@Perk Earl: “If we are in overshoot, then why doesn’t human population crash?”
The results of ‘Overshoot’ are not instantaneous. It’s an observation that a certain level of consumption over-reaches the capacity for that resource to be a sufficient supply indefinitely. A reduction in population will occur as a result of overshoot, but it happens after hitting certain limits.
In laymen’s terms it’s a sling shot effect. A certain level of depletion must occur before population drops.
You should read Catton’s book before jumping to any conclusions.
Don on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 3:37 pm
I guess this comes down to the difference between logic and science.
Does a bear shit in the woods? Logically a bear is a living thing and all living things take shits. therefore a bear does shit in the woods. From a scientific view however, until a bear has been observed shitting in the woods, nomatter how strong the hypothetical argument for it may be, it is still uncertain until it has been observed.
I still say that this is an argument in minutiae since we all seem to be in agreeance that on the whole we,(people inhabiting earth currently), are pretty screwed, but, from a purely scientific standpoint it is still uncertain.
Plant you remind me of my high school science teacher, and the arguments we would have over significant figures.
It is good to have a dissenting voice around, When you have too many people in agreeance and no dissenting voice or “10th man” you end up in situations like Algore telling everyone that most of the US would be under water by 2013, but here we are its 2015 and my house that was 3 ft above sea level in 2003 is still 3 ft above sea level. Hawking trying to convince people that at some point in time when the universe started to contract time would run backwards. Sagan warning everyone that if the kuwait oil fields were set on fire it would end life on earth.
No need to attack me guys, I am not saying that we are not likely in overshoot, or disagreeing with anyone, just pointing out the difference between logic and science.
Plantagenet on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 3:52 pm
Daver
When you overspend your checking account you are not in “overshoot”. You are OVERDRAWN.
Again, you folks just don’t know what the scientific meaning of the word “overshoot” is. In population dynamics and ecology it has a very specific meaning.
Here…think about it this way.
Bunnies are not in overshoot NOW if the population is going to double next year.
OK? Can you understand that concept? Good–now try this one:
Humans are not in overshoot NOW if the population is going to add a billion people over the next 10 years.
Get it now?
Davy on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 3:55 pm
Good point Don.
I enjoy poking Planter and he likes it so no harm done. Other find it Planter annoying. Then there are others that annoy me and the others find no harm done. I guess that is the science of human nature.
GregT on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 4:00 pm
Plant,
What you wrote above:
“The definition of overshoot is: ” In population dynamics and population ecology, overshoot occurs when a population exceeds the long term carrying capacity of its environment. The consequence of overshoot is called a crash or die-off.”
What part of “EXCEEDS LONG TERM CARRYING CAPACITY” do you not understand Plant? We began exceeding the long term carrying capacity of the planet 40 years ago.
Plantagenet on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 5:32 pm
Please put on your thinking cap and lets consider a thought experiment involving bunnies, ok?
Now, are you in a quiet place where you can think things through in a calm fashion? Good. Now relax. Think calm thoughts. Feeling better? ready to think now? OK.
Now Imagine we have a population of bunnies in a certain environment—say a particular valley. The bunnies live in this valley for years and years. Their population slowly grows. But next summer this bunny population will double. This will put the bunny population into overshoot and after eating every leaf in sight in their environment by the fall the bunnies start starving to death and a population crash will ensue.
OK—Here’s the question, greg.
Are the bunnies in overshoot during all the years and years that their population slowly grew? [HINT—NO] Are they in overshoot the year before their population doubled? {HINT–NO]
???
???
OK—Lets review. No, the bunnies are not in overshoot during all the years that their population slowly grew. They aren’t even in overshoot the year prior to the big boom year. They don’t go into overshoot until next year when their population grows to point that the environment can’t support them and die off begins.
And so—through all these years and years— how can one know when the bunnies are at overshoot? You know by the fact that die off begins.
Get it now?
meld on Thu, 5th Feb 2015 5:41 pm
Plant, nice thought experiment. Now think of all the other variables you missed out. like how the bunnies kept breeding even though there was a lack of food, or how the bunnies simply got by on less for a while. The food supply could drop and the bunnies would still grow in population for another couple of years. That’s called? overshoot 🙂