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Death by hockey sticks

dothemath.ucsd.edu

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Re: Death by hockey sticks

#91

Post by adrianN »

EGreg wrote: post #35
sacrosancty wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hockey sticks usually end up being S-shaped curves. The author is just doom-screaming because we're currently in the rapid change phases of lots of them but hasn't shown on any of the graphs the point where disaster will occur. What's the critical rate of extinctions that would end global economic growth before most of the world has western quality of life? He has no clue! So his worries are just emotional and based…

I'm not sure how S-shaped curves help when it comes to the collapse of all ecosystems is concerned... are we supposed to innovate our way out of rapidly dwindling biodiversity on the planet? insects and pollinators birds and large game animals forests and rainforests kelp forests dying coral reefs dying overfishing plastic pollution greenhouse gas pollution acidification of oceans 1/3 of all arable land underwent des…

We also did reasonably well with lead, sulphur dioxide, ddt, and probably a couple more chemicals, but your point still stands.

Re: Death by hockey sticks

#92

Post by adrianN »

dane-pgp wrote: post #89
pastage wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is overly optimisic though, the Paris agreement was a minimal effort, California and all other governments are on track to fail miserably at following even that. Which means we are talking about a lot more than a "few hot weeks".

> the Paris agreement was a minimal effort, California and all other governments are on track to fail miserably at following even that. Could you clarify what you mean by "on track"? According to the Guardian[0], "California Governor Jerry Brown [issued] an executive order calling for the entire California economy to become carbon-neutral by 2045" and "In order to stay below the Paris climate threshold of 2°C global…

I don't know about California, but on the nation level, nobody is doing very well: https://climateactiontracker.org/

Re: Death by hockey sticks

#93

Post by personjerry »

Some thoughts:

> [Graphs showing exponential population up, outputs up, resource extraction up]

Ok, great

> [Graphs showing logistic wild animal biomass, forest cover]

Ok, not good

> Whatever model we have adopted for existing on this planet, it seems to be a poor choice. It appears to be on track to fail.

WHAT? Where did this conclusion come from? There's so many hoops jumped to arrive at this conclusion that I'm astounded. How is "fail" defined by forest cover? Or number of wild animal species? As though we will blindly march towards 0 forest cover over the next N years and immediately suffocate ourselves? No, of course we are paying attention and will come up with new inventions or policies as requirements come up. We are resourceful and intelligent and we'll find ways to adapt.

On another note, curves like this in ecology almost always end up as an S-curve (see Carrying Capacity [0]). It's just a matter of finding what our capacity is and thinking about how we can gracefully decline in growth and avoid the Malthusian trap [1]). Tangentially, I guess this might eventually lead to policies like China's One Child policy [2], and interestingly that means whatever percentages of different cultures exist when our population growth slows will probably remain about the same.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy

Re: Death by hockey sticks

#94

Post by m0llusk »

The ultimate conclusion that human population and economic activity are bad does not follow. We have only just started to begin working with efficient resource management and renewable energy sources.

Just to point out some natural counterexamples trees dropping their leaves seasonally is a fairly recent catastrophic pollution situation that nature has dealt with in ways that actually increase biomass. Large ruminant herds actually propagate productive environments which we learned when trying to quantify the damage done by their activities. So it is entirely possible that a large population of humans with high economic activity could actually interact positively with the environment. The problem is that we have barely even begun to experiment with how this might work.

Re: Death by hockey sticks

#95

Post by dane-pgp »

telotortium wrote: post #63

Oh God, it's the Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist[1] dude again. [1] http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-...

Sadly he's still at it. To save people from subjecting themselves to all of his tortured logic, here's just a sample from the article you linked:

> The upshot is that at a 2.3% growth rate (conveniently chosen to represent a 10× increase every century), we would reach boiling temperature in about 400 years.

Basically his conclusion is that at some point in the next 400 years, the predominant economic system on Earth will have to change in some way (and that economists are short-sighted for not believing this).

The analysis also seems to completely miss how the global economy's energy intensity has been falling for 20 years, according Enerdata[0]: "Global energy intensity (total energy consumption per unit of GDP) ... historical trend (-1.5%/year on average between 2000 and 2019)"

[0] https://yearbook.enerdata.net/total-energy/world-energy-inte...

Re: Death by hockey sticks

#96

Post by lettergram »

The recently added postscript is my favorite part of the article.

It comments how traffic appears exponential due to the recent HN traffic. Then says:

> I trust I need not explain how funny I think this is. I also have a fairly robust idea for how this curve will look a week from now. Just sayin’.

Traffic will drop fast and return to normal (slightly higher base) in a few days.

Every thing in this article discusses current curves. But there’s actually good reason to assume those curves will return to baseline. Particularly, ones such as “gonad tree cover”. Tree cover is increasing and will return to base as we no longer are using it as a primary energy source and are increasingly using less to build.

My point is the doom and gloom in most cases is not really warranted as it will adjust.

The author also mentions our “global civilization”, we don’t have one. I get their point, but it’s an important note that we have multiple civilizations. That means these curves are happening due to the sun of independent actions of all civilizations. There’s probably no way to change the outcome.

The destruction of the rainforest is out of the control of all civilizations beyond Brazil. China is by far the largest polluter in the world, no one can stop that.

Those hockey stick curves might be inevitable; but they probably aren’t “globally true”. I’m betting if we look at mammal populations in places like Idaho or Alaska they’ve been less impacted than say, Massachusetts.

The problem isn’t really clear from the global charts

Re: Death by hockey sticks

#97

Post by sidewndr46 »

wildmanxx wrote: post #76
m_dupont wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the worst thing is that with the extinction rate, he states that he implicitly sets the background extinction rate to 0 in the year 1000. This is going to bias his 3-point curve fitting even moreso. The background extinction rate in the absence of humans is probably much higher than 0. New species are also continuously emerging while others are going extinct, so that the total number remains steady.

You are kinda arguing against your point. Around the year 1000, it's a reasonable guess to assume that emergence of new species and species extinction were roughly in balance, so net extinction rate was indeed around 0. Today, it's well-established that this net extinction rate is as horrible as is described. A few new species emerging here and there are not enough to compensate for the mess that we are causing on th…

Simply looking at the net species over a year doesn't really tell the full story of it.

You can lose megafauna like the American Bison or Steller's sea cow. Smaller fauna like the thylacine are also lost. Such species aren't going to re-emerge in the timescale of humanity. What I named off are just 3 species. If 3 species of ants happen to replace them, that's not really making up the difference. The world has plenty of ants in plenty of species already.

Also please don't drag out the "American Bison isn't extinct!" argument. There were less than a thousand at some point in the 19th century, so all the genetic diversity they had is gone. They've been bred with cattle to the point that the remaining herds are basically all hybrids, despite claims to the contrary. They're also functionally extinct in North America, as all herds are dependent on management at this point.

Re: Death by hockey sticks

#98

Post by dane-pgp »

cmgxyz wrote: post #47
dafty4 wrote: post #28

Don’t plot the amount of wild mammalian biomass, plot the amount of totally mammalian biomass. Doubt you’ll see a downward hockey stick in that case. What makes a wild mammal more special than a domestic one?

Nothing, but that doesn't mean they deserve extinction. It'll be a poorer Earth if it's all housecats and no tigers. What makes us more special than other animals? Also nothing, in my view.

> What makes us more special than other animals? Also nothing, in my view.

If you really believe that then you should go live out in a field and eat grass like oxen rather than writing that comment on the internet. If humans aren't more special, then nothing is special at all.

Re: Death by hockey sticks

#99

Post by dane-pgp »

a3w wrote: post #65
influx wrote: post #40

What ever happened to peak oil? Seems like a similar argument here.

I feel like feeding a troll, but peak oil happened in 2020. Says BP. Limits of growth said it would happen between 2010 and 2030. So the answer to "whatever happened to peak oil" is "it's on track as scheduled" Disclaimer: We do have some economic transition in europe due to a (cold/hot) war, that may conflagrate the actual year due to spikes and valleys, though. Psychohistory Data science works for a large populace…

To give a recent citation, from April of this year:

> The energy transition continues to gain steam, with oil demand projected to peak in this decade, perhaps as soon as 2025, according to new research by McKinsey & Company.

https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/the-environment/27042...

Re: Death by hockey sticks

#100

Post by Schroedingersat »

dane-pgp wrote: post #95
telotortium wrote: post #63

Oh God, it's the Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist[1] dude again. [1] http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-...

Sadly he's still at it. To save people from subjecting themselves to all of his tortured logic, here's just a sample from the article you linked: > The upshot is that at a 2.3% growth rate (conveniently chosen to represent a 10× increase every century), we would reach boiling temperature in about 400 years. Basically his conclusion is that at some point in the next 400 years, the predominant economic system on Earth…

That's the entire point though.

For economic growth to continue, the economy must completely decouple from all necessary resources.

At that point all real commodities are not part of the economy which is growing so the thing with the commodities in it is the real economy which is static.

The inevitability of the conclusion is ironclad. The only matter is which limiting resources necessitate moving to a steady state economy.

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