[DesuMaiden]

Infinite growth in consumption and population is not possible on a finite planet. You can only have x amount of people consuming y amount of resources on the planet at any given time. You cannot exceed your carrying capacity if you want to survive in the long-term. If you exceed the carrying capacity of the environment, your population will be reduced until it is below the carrying capacity of the environment. The new carrying capacity (after exceeding the carrying capacity for a long time) will be lower than the original carrying capacity.

We (as a species) have already exceeded our carrying capacity by a long shot. We are able to exceed the carrying capacity of our environment mostly due to fossil fuels. Unless we take the measures to naturally reduce our population, our population will naturally be reduced by plague, famine, war and other disasters.

You want proof of us exceeding our carrying capacity? We are destroying 150 species everyday. We are destroying about 50,000 species every year around the world. We are in the middle of a mass extinction comparable to the extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs. We are the cause of this extinction. The fact there is over 7 billion of us on this planet is the cause of this extinction.

If you look at a graph of human population of the past 2000 years (starting from 1 AD), what you will notice is that the human population was only at around 200 million at the time of Christ. It remains fairly stable until right before the Bubonic plague where it increases a bit. And then there is a little dip in population due to the Bubonic Plague around 1350 AD. And then fast forward a few hundred years later, we have the Industrial Revolution. That's when the population starts to rapidly grow. There was only 1 billion people on this planet 200 years ago. But around 1900 (at the turn of the 20th century), what you see as oil became ubiquitous, the population grows in an almost perfectly vertical line from 1.6 billion in 1900 to over 7.2 billion in 2014.

The extra 5 billion plus people exist almost solely because of fossil fuels. There is no case in nature where a population experiences rapid, vertical growth (be it bacteria in a petri dish or caribou on an Arctic island) due to favorable circumstances doesn't experience an immediate crash in population afterwards. It is a law. It is a law as fundamental as gravity. It is a law as fundamental as thermodynamics. And if one thinks of it, it might also be true of the stock exchange or financial markets which go upwards vertically with extremely rapid growth will crash downwards afterwards. It is the history of every bubble.

Unless mankind surrenders to the fact that he lives on a finite planet and that he must live in balance with all of the animal and plant life, we can never have true happiness. Mankind has not surrendered to the fact he lives on a finite planet, and he continues to destroy the habitat of all of the other plant and animals species on this planet, so he can never achieve true happiness and stability under these circumstances. Mankind continues to live in the delusion of infinite growth on a finite planet. Unless we stop our infinite growth in consumption and population, we will experience a massive die off or even an extinction of our entire species.

That's my message. It might be difficult to accept, but unless you accept this, the human race is doomed.

[Ibon]

Well said Desu, you get the big picture. It will be interesting as consequences unfold how quickly this knowledge starts to spread and from there how quickly consequences start bringing mankind to a consensus about making true sacrifices toward self regulation. You are young and part of the generation that will move more into the thick of these consequences. I wish you all the best in advance.

[DesuMaiden]

Well said Desu, you get the big picture. It will be interesting as consequences unfold how quickly this knowledge starts to spread and from there how quickly consequences start bringing mankind to a consensus about making true sacrifices toward self regulation. You are young and part of the generation that will move more into the thick of these consequences. I wish you all the best in advance.

I believe the majority of people need to change the way they think and behave if we are to have a chance of surviving as a species. Only a small percentage of the people on this planet realize that we are heading down a path towards our own demise. Unless everyone starts to change, we cannot have any major change and thread back on a path towards sustainability.

[GregT]

Not much that any of us can do about our species' survival Desu. It is difficult enough trying to get a few more people to wake up, nevermind changing everyone. We can only take care of ourselves, our loved ones, and hope for the best. Location has always been important, but it will be paramount at some point in the future. Choose your location wisely, hope for the best, but be prepared for the worst.

[Pops]

Infinite growth in consumption and population is not possible on a finite planet.

Humanity isn't listening.

In fact, growth and consumption aka: survival and procreation, are the cornerstones of biology. I'm thinking platitudes are pretty well drowned out by hunger and horny.

So what is a boy to do with the limited amount of time on his biological clock?

That's right, survive and procreate.

[h2]

growth and consumption aka: survival and procreation, are the cornerstones of biology.

I don't believe this statement is correct in terms of biology, I believe what is actually true is that species adjust their breeding behaviors and frequencies to fit in the evolutionarily technical sense of fitting into a niche. Procreation is obviously required for this, but expansion/growth is not, in fact, quite the contrary. In other words, despite the human myth we tell ourselves of us being non biological, what actually happens in nature is that you have an ecosystem, each species which occupies that ecosystem adjusts itself to fit into the total. Except some branches of relatively new sections of the genus homo, and even within that relatively new branch (cro magnon and later that is) there has been a wide variation in behaviors, some groups adapted themselves to the food availability of their niche just fine, and were still doing that until they were overrun by our current version of ourselves. In other words, breeding/reproduction frequency was adjusted to the ability of the niche they occupied on a local level to support their numbers. Taboo was the mechanism in this case used to regulate numbers. The longer I've thought on this, however, the more likely I believe it to be that the willingness to adjust breeding behaviors to the needs of social taboos may itself be a genetic adaptation, which is why the behavior of agriculture based human cultures is largely incomprehensible to more traditional cultures, which might use light ag but do not use only that, ie, they remain in their niche as one among many. Other manifestations of this difference would be forming bonds with other species vs focusing only on humans (aka, humanism in its varied forms). Bonding with non human creatures helps further to integrate you into your niche as a people/culture, losing this bonding helps you pull out of the natural process, as we have. So I would suspect strongly that as ag food becomes primary, genetic adaptions occur that make it less likely the people will be adapted to fitting into their niche, just as hunter gatherers would adapt to fitting into their niches. These genetic variations have been noted as early ag cultures spread in the mideast, and they can be noted in the americas as well, should we chose to note them, which we don't.

It's been often noted how species when moved to a different ecosystem change their breeding behaviors very rapidly to adjust to what that new system can support, ie, genetic adaptation which results in more/fewer births per year.

To give a clear example, if you have an arctic environment, with wolves, caribou, and moss as primary food sources, the wolves and caribou will adapt their breeding behaviors/frequencies to fit the limiting factor, the moss/lichen food supply. Roughly the right number of wolves and caribou will be generated every year so these populations all sustain over time. That's by the way why the reindeer island study doomers like to cite is so silly and out of context, and really not valid in terms of biology, it's just an interesting corner case. If you move wolves and caribou to a more complicated ecosystem, say, the pacific northwest, you will see the relative numbers of each population change because of the expanded food source for the caribou, and the different food sources for wolves, deer, small animals, etc, but you will see a balance occur after some time, if it's a natural system. This is, for example, why rabbits 'breed like rabbits', they are easy targets for carnivors, so to have a stable population, they need to create a lot of rabbits, but the goal in biology is not to grow, it's to successfully occupy the niche.

Use of agriculture and non sustainable energy / resource sources have allowed the non biologically viable sections of our genus to expand out of control, violating major rules about how a species fits into its niche, something you can read early First Nations dwellers of the americas lament about massively when faced with such biological foolishness.

So the real actual rule in biology, not petri dish etc experiments like sugar and yeast, or humans and farming, is evolve, fit into the totality of the ecological niche you occupy, including reaching a balance between species. It's ssomewhat annoying how long various versions of social darwinism have persisted in the thinking of even people who should actually know better. Social darwinism basically totally ignores the totality of the niche, and focuses only on the 'success' of one fraction, but even that 'success' is totally wrong in terms of evolutionary theory, since success in evolution means the species perpetuates over time, through natural selection, and fitting into the niche. Failure to fit into the niche means species failure.

I think this is basically right, though I might have some details wrong.

[Pops]

growth and consumption aka: survival and procreation, are the cornerstones of biology.

I don't believe this statement is correct in terms of biology, I believe what is actually true is that species adjust their breeding behaviors and frequencies to fit in the evolutionarily technical sense of fitting into a niche. Procreation is obviously required for this, but expansion/growth is not, in fact, quite the contrary.

So they do this how? Do they have a rabbit convention and the report comes out of committee as to the appropriate breding rate? LOL

Not really sure what it is you disagree with. "Fitting into the niche" is just a nice way to say balancing procreation with mortality. Human population was fairly stable for a long while with a much higher death rate than we currently enjoy. We were growing somewhat, along with expanding our range, but it is only the last few hundred years, maybe a dozen generations or two that our population has really exploded. The reason is simply that our niche has changed and we haven't caught up.

Knowledge and especially fossil fuels have cut the mortality rate dramatically and as usual (our species no different than most) it takes a while to adjust birth rate to the new reality - hence the population increase.



Could be that we adjust our birth rate downward but then FFs and some of our knowledge leaves us and we need to start going at it like bunnies again. But again, it is about survival and procreation.

[DesuMaiden]

Not much that any of us can do about our species' survival Desu. It is difficult enough trying to get a few more people to wake up, nevermind changing everyone.

The Collapse movie and A Crude Awakening: The Oilcrash have been gaining alot of new views recently. I think this might have something to do with me sharing those videos on my Facebook. I think people have been sharing those videos more during the past couple of months. I didn't know about Crude Awakening and Collapse before July of this year. I am glad I learned about peak oil because it has confirmed my belief that the world is falling apart. By sharing videos about peak oil on Facebook and other social media sites, you can make a difference because the more people watch those videos, the more people will make a difference.

We can only take care of ourselves, our loved ones, and hope for the best. Location has always been important, but it will be paramount at some point in the future. Choose your location wisely, hope for the best, but be prepared for the worst.

We can make a difference. We can make more people aware of these issues. Infinite growth just isn't possible on a finite planet. Anyone who says otherwise is crazy or an economist.

And the chances of us leaving this planet before we destroy it are pretty slim given how things are going. We are destroying this planet so rapidly that we will probably never develop the technology to ever leave this planet.

We MIGHT have had the chance to leave this planet, but we end up destroying ourselves before that ever came into fruition.

[h2]

There's no question of what agriculture and aggressive resource exploitation have done to human populations, but that has nothing to do with natural patterns, that's just a weird glitch in the history of our planet, relatively very short term, as the population growth graph below show clearly enough. The resemblance to the behavior of a cancer has been often and I think correctly made, a cancer isn't fitting into a niche, it's a genetic misfiring, a failed experiment, more or less. Ie, it expands, grows, consumes, without consideration of the overall system that supports it, some kind of life form, and then kills it, but it's not a part of that system or niche, it's a disease, consuming the system, and will never result into any cancer successfully occupying its niche long term in an evolutionary sense.

IHuman population was fairly stable for a long while with a much higher death rate than we currently enjoy. We were growing somewhat, along with expanding our range, but it is only the last few hundred years, maybe a dozen generations or two that our population has really exploded. The reason is simply that our niche has changed and we haven't caught up.

You'll note that what you say there is basically completely wrong, which is kind of funny if you think about it, I know that's the doomer peak oil story, but it takes only a few minutes to find that it's wrong using google, took me only 3 tries on google images to find a good graph since I knew I was looking for a logarithmic growth chart, not an arithmetic one (scroll down to see a fine chart, logarithmic). We weren't 'growing somewhat' we were engaging in frequent doublings of global population starting around 5000 BC, not a few hundred years ago, just as we do today, we do it faster today of course, but the overall pattern is the same. I suspect that realizing this issue is much longer term than a few hundred years makes the doomer in us somewhat grouchy and unsatisfied, since, as Greere notes all the time lately, if you want to know our future, just look at our past.

We are destroying niches all over the planet now, there's nothing there to catch up to, we've actually left the natural system that created us, and you can see how much we've left it in the chart below, and how long ago (and once the site software is corrected, you'll even see the population counts at the right side of the chart!!). When you talk about ecological niches, you are talking about essentially local systems, to which the inhabitants adapt. The Inuit for example lived in and adapted very well to their niche, which was similar to the niche occupied by the Siberians they came from, who themselves had adapted well to that type of system. They serve as a good example of humans who were successful at filling a PART of their ecological niche, along with the other creatures around them. In other words, that's an example of living inside a niche, which you can also call sustainable in the true sense of that word, something humans have repeatedly proven themselves in some forms to be totally capable of, despite the myths we create to suggest that's not the case.

Fixing this will involve letting nature rebuild itself, with us as part of it. There's no rule that says this has to happen, if we insist on destroying all the niches we are using up in the end there will be very little left to work with, the more destruction we engage in, the less there will be left to restore to some more sustainable state. And this type of thing doesn't have to be organized or global, and it won't be I would suspect strongly, all that is required is that some people some places do it where they live, just like we did before the modern era, the world was filled with empires that ebbed and flowed, huge regions that were fairly sustainably occupied in other areas, and that's how I suspect our future will look, it will become increasingly regional again, though since we know now roughly where everything is globally, there won't be any real mysteries like we had before the great ages of exploration. I suspect we won't fix it, and will push things as far as they can go before we start running out of resources to build up walls against natural systems, which is going to happen pretty soon.

The bright side is if you have empty spaces in a niche that is recovering, evolution will fill them VERY quickly, it will just take the stuff available and modify it to work better, that happens incredibly quickly, for example, I just saw a nova episode about the coyote/wolf hybrid that is spreading in the US/Canada east coast, it's extremely adaptable to human presence, and can function in a wild state living in urban areas, in fact, they suggested it's not a question of if, but when, that newly evolved species will start to live in new york city itself. The mule deer, I think it was, likewise was an adaptation to human presence in North America, it's much smarter then regular deer, which lets it survive better around a very smart predator like us.

A niche is a web of interdependent parts, you can't actually pull one part out and say, oh, this part would do x if it wasn't in this niche, it's part of the system. Talking about a rabbit out of context to its actual full niche is a pure abstraction that would never happen in nature, that's something science has made up because it's a useful tool if you want to try to exploit nature more, ie, further the non sustainable abuse of our environment, just as talking about a human out of context of human culture and language, and of course, the underlying ecosystems, has no actual referent in the real world.

Modern industrial / agricultural humans seem to have a lot of problems understanding this, since not understanding it is sadly essential if you want to function/prosper in our system, so we've evolved these silly ideas about growth, expansion, etc, which really are just mirrors we can stare into so we can admire ourselves without thinking about what we are actually doing. Not all humans do this, or have done it, but we certainly do.

It's not just burning carbon fuels, however, we were doing fantastically great damage just using wood sailboats, and before that, rowboats (aka, galleys). History is a good thing to learn and read, it's useful to avoid some of the blinders the peak oil doomer stuff imposes as a sort of odd offshoot, that's I think because very few people who follow peak oil stuff actually read much else, particularly not much else that's serious. Some do. This is why I recommend people follow and read John Michael Greere, he at least tries to get the stuff into real contexts, and he usually does a pretty good job of it, within the areas he has time to really delve into.

The over focus on oil, while popular in peak oil sites and circles, ignores what phenomenal damage we did without it, really astounding when you think about it actually. Using basically no coal, the Roman Empire, the Chinese empires, expanded into massive geographical regions, creating empires that changed forms but never really went away, Rome occupied Europe, and Europe is still here today, same with China. Cultures in Egypt and the Americas created massive networks and structures without any modern tools or resources, just labor, animal pulling power, and stone, plus a tiny bit of metal I guess in some cases, not in the Americas though, i believe they made all those cities without metal tools, stone, amazing, not sure about that, I think that's right.

A picture is nice, this is a logarithmic scale of human populations:

thanks: http://melyawatyrenggayya.blogspot.com/ ... chive.html (original url location gone)

The standard graphs used flatten out too much the early phases because when you have a spike to 7 billion, and ignore all the previous doublings, everything before that looks flat just as the income of 10k or 20k looks flat compared to the income of 100 million, but as you can see clearly in this better scaled one, we've been spiking up LONG before oil or coal. That one suggests 5000 BCE but it's worth remembering population estimates from that long ago are pretty inaccurate, just until the last decades we liked to pretend that the Americas were relatively unpopulated, but latest estimates based on better research suggest at least an order of magnitude higher population in the Americas pre euro contact than we thought before.

Once oil diminishes, and coal gets too hard to extract, ie, probably in the next 100 years or so, the oil / coal fueled population expansion will vanish, but we'll still be hovering around a bit below where we started that phase, since we will have damaged our environment so badly in the process it won't have the same carrying capacity it did before fossil fuel extraction/consumption started.

Once you clarify terms, explain the actual growth, you'll realize that oil isn't the problem, and without oil, we'll still be living in cultures we would recognize, at least anyone who seen any part of the older non suburban US world anyway. Old town parts of Barcelona were made before fossil fuel use became prevalent, and can exist just fine without them, it's amazing what you can do with a craftsman, wood, and stone, why people think that is going to be some horrible fate is beyond me, I suggest a walk down any freeway or suburban street or shopping center, a long walk, before assuming losing that is bad in anyway.

I know Desumaiden is collecting info for some reason on this, not sure why exactly, but just on the off chance he/she is serious, it's worth realizing that we aren't going to 'fix' ourselves, and the problem isn't oil, it's much deeper than that.

[DesuMaiden]

Hello h2,

I'm well aware of the fact that human population has grown exponentially before the discovery of fossil fuels. But during the past 200 years the human population has been growing especially fast, much faster than usual. This is in large part due to fossil fuels. Yes, scientific advancements in medicine and hygiene has lowered the death rate and infant mortality which allowed population to increase. But you cannot deny that fossil fuels has allowed the population to grow very rapidly. Michael Ruppert shows this point very clearly in the movie Collapse and in many other presentations he has done around the world.

If you look at a graph of human population, you will notice this. If this graph starts in 1 AD, you will see the population start at 200 million or so people around 1 AD. It remains fairly stable for the next 1000 years. And then the population increases a bit to 300 and then 400 million during the 11th to 14 th century. And then the Bubonic Plague strikes in 1350 AD, reducing the population from 400 million to 300 million. Then fast forward to the start of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century, we have around 800 to 900 million people. In 1804, the population finally reaches its first billion. And then the population grows more rapidly than before because of advancements in medicine and health care.

At the beginning of the 20th century, we finally reach 1.6 billion people. And then BAM we discover petroleum. We then use petroleum to increase food production in conjunction with fertilizers made of natural gas. With oil-powered machinery and fertilizers made of natural gas, we were able to expand our food supply by three or more times. And thus the human population expanded from 1.6 billion in 1900 to over 7.2 billion people in a mere span of 114 years. We experienced over 1% growth rate in population per year during the past 100 years. 1% growth rate in population per year means the population will double in every 70 years or less. Before oil, the population of the world was growing at 0.1% per year or less.

In short, oil was what made the population spike from 1.6 billion to 7.2 billion. The population starts growing vertically in a very rapid manner thanks to oil-powered machinery and natural gas based fertilizers used in agriculture. Before oil, the population of the world was growing at very slow pace of 0.1% per year or less. With oil, grow rates of 1% per year or more become the norm.

Advancements in medicine and health care in conjunction with fossil fuels is what allowed our population to explode during the past 200 years, especially during the past 100 years. But without fossil fuels, the Green Revolution wouldn't be possible. In the 1950s and 60s, we experienced a huge change in agriculture. We finally ran out of new arable land to cultivate. We were about to face a food shortage crisis, but then someone invented the Green Revolution, which allowed us to increase the productivity per acre or land. But I doubt there will be another major revolution in food production to exponentially increase our food production to meet the increasing demand for food.

With fossil fuels in decline, it seems like the Green Revolution may be over. And without the Green Revolution, we are back in the same crisis we faced in 1960 when we ran out of new arable land to cultivate. But except this time we have possibly 8 billion or more people instead of just three billion people. Our food production will only be enough to feed 3 billion people yet there are 8 billion people. That sounds like a recipe for a die off.

And let's not forget to mention the peak water crisis. Most areas around the world are experiencing water shortages. These water shortages will kill the Green Revolution too, because the Green Revolution is highly dependent on irrigation of crops. Without sufficient water supplies, the Green Revolution will be over. Food and crop production will decline. And we may experience food shortages simply because there isn't enough water for irrigating our crops. It works like this. Water supplies are insufficient. This causes crops to die. Then food shortages arise.

The peak oil and peak water crisis are twin devils that will kill the Green Revolution. And by killing the Green Revolution, we will not have enough food for the world's population. And massive famine and even a die off of most of the world's population may result from this.

[SeaGypsy]

Desu, h2 is saying the same thing, with the rare position of evolved acceptance of the reality. Bottlenecking post fossil fuels is virtually inevitable. Annihilation, extinction of our species, not necessarily. Assuming lack of cheap energy, whether one survives the bottleneck, will largely depend on what region you inhabit. Personally I am in total agreement.

[Lore]

There is a point here. Food security relies on many factors. Most of which are in flux. Aside from the availability of clean water and energy for crops you have the effects of climate change, soil depletion, conflicts and logistics. All are poised to negatively impact agricultural yields, even here in the US, in the coming years.

[DesuMaiden]

The peak oil and peak water crisis are twin devils that will kill the Green Revolution. And by killing the Green Revolution, we will not have enough food for the world's population. And massive famine and even a die off of most of the world's population may result from this.

Pure conjecture. There is little or no evidence that people won't have food post peak (at least in the US, the world's breadbasket). Food-related energy use was only 14.4 percent of total energy use in 2002 (USDA. What this means is the people won't die off on the peak-oil decline.

There will be plenty of fuel left over for food when economies collapse (as debt/growth come to a halt) and the waste-distribution system that employs so many middle-class folks also collapses. People will merely stop commuting to pointless white-collar jobs. This means more time to cook at home. Less fast food, packaged food, restaurant food and more food-stamp porridge. With the occasional ration of beef jerky. And canned sardines. Yum!

Our food system is reliant on cheap fossil fuels and water. If you take those two factors away, it collapses. Of course, we can still produce food without the Green Revolution, but it would be much less food. Our food system will collapse because of peak water and peak oil. And then you will have to locally produce all of your food, because without cheap fossil fuels, you will not be able to import food from thousands of miles away.

[DesuMaiden]

Desu, just repeating the same questionable conclusion ('we're all going to die') doesn't make it right. If you read what I wrote then you should respond.

I think we'll have "much less food processing" not "much less food"

We might not all die, but there will be massive hard-ships as oil supplies decline.

[ennui2]

Desu, you sound like you are at the early stages of taking the red-pill. Over time you'll realize this is a slow-moving train-wreck. It may very well be that all of us living today may never see anything more severe than perma-recession.

[ralfy]

The world faces not just recessions but also peak oil and global warming coupled with environmental damage, and those linked to other problems, such as the spread of disease, increased military spending, etc.

[DesuMaiden]

Desu, you sound like you are at the early stages of taking the red-pill. Over time you'll realize this is a slow-moving train-wreck. It may very well be that all of us living today may never see anything more severe than perma-recession.

Or you might see the complete collapse of industrial civilization after a perma-recession.

[onlooker]

I have noticed that members here fall into two camps those who see somewhat of a die-off but eventually settling into a more stabilized mode with a lesser size population and those who see catastrophic die-off with little chance of resuming any kind of civilized society and in fact maybe eventual extinction. I side much more with the latter. I think anyone who does not see the damage already inflicted upon Earth and the damage yet to occur is not seeing all or not seeing correctly. The Biosphere is in severe stress as we speak. The ecosystems that all higher forms of life depend on for survival are deteriorated and in danger of completely breaking down. We are in the process of drawing down vital resources such as fresh water, fossil fuels and topsoil. In fact soil is in some places dead and is only producing via fossil fuel derived fertilizers and pesticides. What happens when these are reduced drastically. Our huge world population is stressing ever more the planet. Global warming threatens to ramp up greatly with methane being released. This is not a matter of allocation of resources, powering down, reorganization etc. It is a matter of Earth being on the border of becoming inhospitable to higher life forms. Is their time to avert this? That to me is the question. My opinion is perhaps but unlikely because of our huge population, our ignorance of the true emergency state we are in and our affinity to live at a certain materialistic standard of living.