[tt] [ExI] [wta-talk] Meme 128: What Have You Changed Your Mind about?

[Perry E. Metzger]

"space nookie" <spacenookie at gmail.com> writes:
> The Club of Rome Report didn't make specific predictions.

Yes, it did.

> They built a computer model of the economy and ran it multiple
> times, using different assumptions each time.  They found that all
> runs of their model EVENTUALLY reached a peak of resource use, with
> resource use falling off after that point (thus the title, "Limits
> to Growth").

In *every* scenario they ran, the results claimed that things went
downhill before where we are now (which is nearly 2010).

> Changing assumptions about technology and recycling altered the
> timing of this peak, but not by as much as you would think because
> of exponential growth.

Actually, for the reasons that that Julian Simon has explained far
more eloquently than I can, the entire idea that we're resource
limited is nuts. Increased human population, for example, only
improves productivity, and as Simon's famous bets with Erlich showed,
we aren't running out of natural resources.

(I won't argue that when the sun stops shining we'll lack for energy
inputs, but before that it is going to swell to red giant and
incinerate the earth anyway. Before that, we don't have much to worry
about, and by that time I imagine we'll be long gone.)

> All they really talk about in the report is this model, the multiple
> scenarios they put it through, and the observations they made about
> the scenario outcomes.  They strongly suggested there were real
> limits to growth but did not say what they were or when they would
> be reached.

Their most optimistic scenarios were substantially worse than
reality. Their whole model was counterfactual -- it implicitly
assumed, for example, that the economy doesn't respond to changes in
supply, which is nuts. (When prices rise, demand falls.)

The report was garbage from the start.


-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry at piermont.com