I will believe the Saudis don't see any upcoming problems with Ghawar when they cancel one of their projects due to low oil prices. If they continue to be full steam ahead with increasing their capacity then I think they are aware that Ghawar may not be as robust in 5 years time as they would like us to believe.
Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2006 3:34 pm Post subject: Peak Population
When do you expect the world population to peak? I mean, the current growth is 200 000 per day, if I am not very much mistaken. This is a middle sized european city appearing in one day!!!! This is hardly sustainable, even if one is an optimist and believes in a slow decline, mild crash and "PO is a no event" things.
As the word PEAK may not seem a well chosen wording (a peak is the maximum point and we can only know it was a peak some years after it happened) I redefine the word peak for this topic : Peak Population is the point of zero population growth.
I myself expect this to come in a 10 - 15 years timeframe.
What are your opinions? I had wanted to do a poll first, but then I changed my mind, because I think that people tend to discuss less in polls as they can just vote and thats it.
Joined: Mar 10, 2005 Posts: 283 Location: Airstrip 1
Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2006 4:17 pm Post subject: Re: Peak Population
sch_peakoiler wrote:
When do you expect the world population to peak? I mean, the current growth is 200 000 per day, if I am not very much mistaken. This is a middle sized european city appearing in one day!!!! This is hardly sustainable, even if one is an optimist and believes in a slow decline, mild crash and "PO is a no event" things.
As the word PEAK may not seem a well chosen wording (a peak is the maximum point and we can only know it was a peak some years after it happened) I redefine the word peak for this topic : Peak Population is the point of zero population growth.
I myself expect this to come in a 10 - 15 years timeframe.
What are your opinions? I had wanted to do a poll first, but then I changed my mind, because I think that people tend to discuss less in polls as they can just vote and thats it.
There's no problem.
We can expand the population indefinitely using biofuels derived from either plankton farms or crops.
Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2006 4:26 pm Post subject: Re: Peak Population
7.1-7.3 billion between 2027-2040. _________________ The whole of human history is a refutation by experiment of the concept of "moral world order". - Friedrich Nietzsche
We modeled this awhile back. It looked at the time like if the peak occurred "now" the dieoff would still take several years to hit, if the mathematical relationship noted in the thread holds true.
The key to survival will be to decouple the fertility rate and the life expectancy from fossil fuel use, if you assume causality.
Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2006 9:13 pm Post subject: Re: Peak Population
Oops... sorry.
The whole idea is that as we increased our use of fossil fuels, from 1900 to today, the following two things happened: Life expectancy got longer (it went from about 35 in 1900 to about 68 globally right now) and also, more people were born (the birth rate went up).... so the population expanded.
The "causality" thing is this: Most peakers believe that the oil usage was a direct cause of this, but there is still some question, as was discussed in one of the threads.
The way the models were constructed was based on the idea that this assumption is correct: that if you knew that you were pumping of some number of barrels of oil per year, it would cause the birth rate and life span to be a known amount, so easy to compute the population increase.
Anyhow, if you believe that the oil directly enabled the population increase on the way up, it stands to reason that if you take the oil away, the situation will reverse itself and the population will go into decline. That is, unless you can figure out a way to use technology or some other means so that the annual birth rate and life expectancy are no longer dependent directly on oil, which most doomers believe you cannot. That's the "decoupling" part. You need to decouple the relationship between oil consumption and birth rate/mortality rate.
In one of those threads, I do not know which one, we talked a little bit about Cuba as a possible guinea pig for this. Cuba's petroleum supply was cut by 20% when the USSR quit subsidizing them. The result was a 40% economic contraction, but there was no mass die off (yet). What there was, however, was a sharp decrease in the birth rate. Also, interestingly, the old timers still hung in there--the life expectancy in Cuba stayed high, almost 79 years old, one of the longest in the world (probably because of the good weather). So, there was no Cuban die off in the sense that there were a lot of dead bodies and starving people around, but in a few years, that small generation will not have as many babies itself, and so the population decline will happen, but will be delayed a few years. So when some of the people on the board talk about Cuba as a post PO model, I would point out you need to wait maybe 25-30 years to see the effects of this, and maybe we do not really want to do this.
So most of these models and scenarios say the same thing. Even if you hit peak oil today, the actual population peak will be delayed by maybe 25 years. Even by a plan of enforced conservation, the only effect would be a delay in the population peak, and a harder crash on the other side. Even a plan by which there was a big population reduction (either accidental or deliberate) right now would only delay the problem. Even a plan where you did not allow anybody to live over 50 would only buy you a few years in 2085 or something (so don't try it). The only thing that will "work" would be to find a way to maintain the same birth rate and life expectancy without the oil usage. Good luck on that. There is no evidence that the Cubans were able to do it, in any case.
In fact, the argument has been made several times that we would be much better off as a global community if the peak were today, and the dieoff were to start gradually a few years from now, in 2025. If CERA and the cornucopians are right, and we really do have enough oil to make it to 2030 or 2040, the population by then will be up around 8-9 billion and the dieoff in that case will be even more severe on the downslope. By then, there may actually be bodies laying around, etc.
Joined: Dec 02, 2005 Posts: 6660 Location: Oil-addicted Southern Californucopia
Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2006 10:03 pm Post subject: Re: Peak Population
pup55 wrote:
...The whole idea is that as we increased our use of fossil fuels, from 1900 to today, the following two things happened: Life expectancy got longer (it went from about 35 in 1900 to about 68 globally right now) and also, more people were born (the birth rate went up).... so the population expanded.
The "causality" thing is this: Most peakers believe that the oil usage was a direct cause of this, but there is still some question, as was discussed in one of the threads.
I'm wearing this out, and I'm sure many are tired of seeing it, but there's been no more more appropriate thread to post it in than this one:
Too much of a coincidence for there to still be some question. Fossil fuel use equals population eruption, period. _________________ "Thank you for attending the oil age. We're going to scrape what we can out of these tar pits in Alberta and then shut down the machines and turn out the lights. Goodnight." - seldom_seen
Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 4:25 am Post subject: Re: Peak Population
Zardoz wrote:
Too much of a coincidence for there to still be some question. Fossil fuel use equals population eruption, period.
Two things may happen at the same time not because one is the cause of the other, but because both have the same cause.
You are saying usage of fossil fuels somehow causes population growth, by some unexplained mechanism. You could as well say that population growth caused increased usage of fossil fuels, and it would make a bit more sense.
My opinion is that both usage of fossil fuels and population growth (caused by better knowledge of the causes of disease) are both caused by the level of scientific knowledge rising to a critical point.
As the level of scientific knowledge is unlikely to decline as fossil fuel use declines, it's absurd to say that population will decline to the same degree as usage of fossil fuels. It's fair to speculate that the consequences of peak oil may include some increase in mortality. But it's absurd to say that we must return to pre-industrial population levels, just because population must fit the curve plotted for fossil fuels.
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