This is a condensed and modified version of a paper of mine that appeared on “The Journal of Population and Sustainability” this year. The image above is the well known “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” by Albrecht Durer – 1498. Yes, I know it is catastrophistic, but it is not my fault if biological populations do tend to collapse![Read More...]
Why is it so difficult to make accurate long-term economic forecasts for the world economy? There are many separate countries involved, each with a self-organizing economy made up of businesses, consumers, governments, and laws. These individual economies together create a single world economy, which again is self-organizing. Self-organizing economies don’t work in a convenient linear pattern–in other words, in a[Read More...]
We know very little about Queen Boudica of the Iceni (20 AD (?) – 61 AD) and most of what we know is probably deformed by Roman propaganda. But we may still be able to put together the main elements of her story and how it was that she almost threw the mighty Roman Legions out of Britain. Above, a fantasy[Read More...]
Ten years ago this week—July 11, 2008 to be exact—the price of a barrel of oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit an intraday high of $147.27, its highest price ever. By the following autumn the world economy was in shambles and the price of oil was tumbling. The oil price eventually bottomed out around $34 per barrel in mid-February the following[Read More...]
I keep reading more and more comments about overpopulation on the social media. It is not just an impression: the trend of increasing interest in population matters is visible in Google Trends. Still weak, but it is there. It is puzzling how the question is returning. It had disappeared from the media after it had been popular in the 1970s, at the[Read More...]
BP recently published energy data through December 31, 2017, in its Statistical Review of World Energy 2018. The following are a few points we observe, looking at the data: [1] The world is making limited progress toward moving away from fossil fuels. The two bands that top fossil fuels that are relatively easy to see are nuclear electric power and hydroelectricity. Solar,[Read More...]
I’m going to lay it out straight because I get worried. … I have no idea about the degree that this following assessment regarding India is accurate or not. I don’t know much about India details. So I am neither agreeing with nor disagreeing with this evaluation. However, I do know this: We are a socialist democracy state in MA.[Read More...]
Many people, including myself, fear that the great acceleration (1, 2) of our consumption and destruction of resources such as land, biodiversity, soil, minerals, and fossil energy sources, could lead us into a catastrophe.
Every night I hear trains, which are pulling stuff into Boston city, MA, USA. Oh wow, it’s amazing. Some of the engines are pulling more than a hundred cars. Clickity-clack again and again for a long amount of time! Then the next train comes with the same sounds. I try to imagine about what is on their cars: drugs,[Read More...]
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Reading many of today’s energy articles, it is easy to get the impression that our energy problem is a quality problem—some energy is polluting; other energy is hoped to be less polluting. There is a different issue that we are not being told about. It is the fact that having enough energy is terribly important, as well. Total world energy consumption has risen quickly[Read More...]
