The Roman Philosopher Lucius Anneaus Seneca (4 BCE-65 CE) was perhaps the first to note the universal trend that growth is slow but ruin is rapid. I call this tendency the "Seneca Effect."

Sunday, January 1, 2023

A Post for the New Year: Do we Still have a Chance to Avoid Collapse?


The article below is an attempt to propose (once more) to the general public the main results of "The Limits to Growth" study of 1972. It is a brief text that appeared in a major Italian newspaper (Il Fatto Quotidiano) on Dec 30, 2022. The limits of length of these articles are, typically, under 800 words, so I had to be extremely synthetic (for an in-depth assessment, see our recent book, "Limits and Beyond"). Mainly, I was curious to see how people would react to my rather blunt statements. 

One good thing about "Il Fatto" is that there is no censorship on comments (except for extreme cases) and so people are free to express themselves as they like, including insulting the authors of the articles ("Liar!" "Idiot!" "Snake Oil Seller!"). As I said in a previous post, I listen to everyone and I trust no one. So, even the most rabid and insulting comments are a chance to grok somethingFor this article, as for many others on "Il Fatto," I received personal attacks because I am too catastrophistic, and also because I am not catastrophistic enough. Some comments are nearly completely incomprehensible and, as usual, people tend to take refuge in impossible nuclear dreams. But I received also a few comments from people who seem to have understood how things stand. We'll see how the debate evolves, for the time being, I am reporting a few translated comments after the main text. 

Happy new year, everybody! 


2022 has been a difficult year for climate and energy. But there is still some hope

Di Ugo Bardi -30 Dec 2022


The year 2022 was a year of great transformation and great difficulty. To assess what lies ahead in the coming year, we might start with the fact that 2022 was the 50th anniversary of the publication of the 1972 study The Limits to Growth. It was not a prophecy, but an analysis of current trends. It said that, if nothing changed, we could expect the beginning of an irreversible decline of the world economy in the first decades of the 21st century. The result of the combined effect of natural resource depletion and pollution.

These are phenomena that occur over a multi-decade span, but the events of 2022 are in line with the trajectory already outlined 50 years ago. Today, the "World System" looks like one of those old cars that loses parts all over the place, consumes fuel like a truck, and pollutes like a coal-fired power plant. In addition, the mechanics not only do not know how to fix it, but they spend their time fighting each other.

We are in trouble on all fronts, first and foremost with fossil fuels. After the Covid-19 crisis of 2020, production showed some recovery, but only a partial one. As for natural gas, Europeans had become accustomed to cheap Russian gas, and this year they got a nasty surprise. Replacing Russian gas will not be easy, and surely the costs of liquefied natural gas are much higher. Not to mention the costs of the infrastructure needed to handle it. And let's say nothing about coal, which is expensive, impractical, and polluting. As for nuclear power, the costs are truly out of this world. It is discussed seriously only where dictatorial governments can afford to embark on expensive and uncertain ventures.

Then there is agriculture, for which fossil fuels are needed for fertilizer and all production operations. At present, the world's agricultural production is fairly stable, but prices are rising everywhere. This is putting the poorest in dire straits. According to FAO data, we are close to having one billion hungry people, and the numbers are growing. In parallel, the growth of the world population has seen a remarkable slowdown. Globally, it is still growing but, if current trends continue, in a few years we may see the beginning of an irreversible decline. On this point, The Limits to Growth was even too optimistic, proposing that the human population could continue growing despite the economic downturn.

About climate, The Limits to Growth saw climate change (part of the general pollution problem) playing a major role only after the beginning of the collapse of the economic system. It may be that, even in this area, the analysis was correct. For the time being, climate change caused regional disasters, rather than global catastrophes. That does not mean we can ignore the problem. The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continues to increase and, with it, the earth's temperature. At the same time, no one seems to care about doing anything serious about it anymore, as seen with this year's Cop27.

In short, we are in bad shape. It certainly seems that The Limits to Growth was even more prophetic than its creators themselves expected.

But there are also positive findings that the 50-year-old study could not account for. One is the discovery that the Earth's ecosystem can have an important cooling effect on climate. Not that this will get us off the hook but, if we treat both forests and marine ecosystems better, we can do something good to reduce the effects of greenhouse gases. Another positive factor is the disruptive growth of renewable energy, which today has such low prices that it has no competitors.

If we can get a few decades of peace, perhaps even just one or two, we can expect solar and wind power to replace most fossil fuel energy production. By coupling renewables with higher efficiency of use, we could greatly reduce the problems of both energy availability and emissions.

Can we do it? Maybe we can. And if we work at it, the most pessimistic scenarios of the Limits to Growth will not come true. So happy new year to all!

____________________________________________________________

Some examples of comments (translated from Italian)


From "Diomedes01" (insults)

The usual idiocies of the end of the year! The author is not an ecologist but an anti-nuclear and is willing to write baloney. The IEA wrote that the most economical energy ever is nuclear energy in any way you count! Instead the author says it is the most expensive when the most expensive are renewables that are made competitive by excluding from costs more or less everything! At the end of the day for the author better fossil and gas than nuclear and we talk about green transition! Ha ha ha.

From "Cortisol0" (nearly completely incomprehensible)

... If we are to have any hope people like you must be relieved of the social role you have, as you of how to solve this crisis from innate human behaviors incompatible with having developed science and technology that combined in tools=machines allow you to release and apply monstrous amounts of energy modifying both the natural energy flow, and the ecosystem, you will never admit it, as it is to develop precisely science and technology claiming endless growth, that the current environmental disaster is being produced and it is only possible with your PRIMARY contribution and denying that it is the fault of this combined conjugate because you are the most guilty of all and once it emerged you would be immediately prosecuted popularly for it and your career and life would be irremediably ruined, while the state and its power demand more and more science and power for weapons and social control, so you pretend to seek a solution when the solution as the initial act is to eliminate this dynamic you are part of with the state.

From "MarcoMx" (good understanding of the matter)

"One is the discovery that the Earth's ecosystem can have an important cooling effect on climate." I'll bet a coffee on that. The planet will not watch unresponsive to our stupidity, it will find a way to cool itself, plants and greenery we are late in defending will grow them themselves. If, however, in the equation we were able to bring the war factor, including armaments and related costs, to zero, or almost zero, the equation would become solvable without much difficulty. We would have much more resources for everything, hunger, energy transition, and pollution. By the way, the popularizers of the climate crisis almost never talk about the burden of weapons and wars (to think the worst...). But one only has to look at the figures to see that it is decisive, over $2 TRILLION each year.  If we fail to do this, well then all the consequent problems we deserve, including eventual extinction. In that case, we would be left with billions of cell phones full of the latest selfies ... the aliens who find them after thousands of years will come to the inevitable conclusion, "What a cocksucker civilization."

46 comments:

  1. Surely you must realise that renewal energy is not really clean, green or sustainable? This can seen in the resources found on the energyskeptic site: https://energyskeptic.com/category/energy/an-overview/

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    1. Surely you must realize that Alice Friedmann is basing her conclusions on obsolete data. Not that she is always wrong, and she has many good points to make. But she should update her database.

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    2. Sorry, apologies for my rather abrupt and somewhat rude question/statement – but I do get frustrated by the position you are putting forward, that given a few decades of peace, “we can expect solar and wind power to replace most fossil fuel energy production.”

      I think the points made by some of the other people who have also commented undermine your position, including the observation that intermittent power sources are just not going to able to replace our dependence on fossil fuel energy.

      The impression being given by the mainstream media is that solar, wind, etc., can replace fossil fuels and allow us to carry with the same energy intensive civilisation. But practically speaking the so-called renewable energy sources might be good for, at most, things like lighting and refrigeration. And there doesn’t seem to be a feasible way of storing the energy they produce for the times when the sun isn’t shining or the wind blowing – which happens a lot in Britain and northern Europe during the winter.

      Also how are the huge amounts of concrete and steel required for wind farms etc going to be produced without fossil fuel power? And solar panels have a limited lifespan - and it will likewise be difficult to produce them without fossil fuel energy, so how will they be replaced/upgraded in the future?

      If there is a feasible plan for producing the very large amounts of power required by our civilisation, without fossil fuel backup, then please point me towards that info.

      We seem to be heading back towards a culture reliant on wind and water power, and I think it is deceiving people to let them believe that renewable energy can replace fossil fuels, except in a very limited sense.

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    3. It is fine, anonymous, you were not rude, just a little abrupt. And I responded in kind. Abruptness is not a problem, the problem is ignorance. And I hope you'll forgive me if I tell you that your statements are based on obsolete data on what renewable energy can do. Just like for Alice Friedmann, I can only invite you to update your database. Then, nobody can honestly say that renewable energy can "replace fossil fuels" -- they are two different technologies. Just like fossil fuels shaped our society to become what it is now, renewable energy will shape society to become something completely different. What it will be, it is hard to say. I believe that it will be surely cleaner and probably stable but, in the end, it will be what it has to be.

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    4. Ugo, probably every reader of this blog agrees with the statement that, in the future, society will be shaped by the availability of renewable energy. The point is that a subset of the possible transitions from the current societal shape to the future societal shape are appropiately described by the term "collapse".

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    5. Delightfully Ugo has moved to a post doom stance of optimism, and I might add to his credit he seemed never less than phlegmatic in his approach to all matters covered on this blog. As Nate Hagens has it, renewables can power civilisation, just not this civilisation. The near future will be so different, but it's impossible to tell how it will be and feel from day to day. But most people understand that lots of things we have now will be out of reach in future, and at the same time, the best things in life are free. (... But you can give them to the birds and bees, I want money... that's what I want. /The Flying Lizards/)

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    6. Collapse is not an event, it is a process

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  2. The problem of climate change right now is the availability of spare parts and machines (washing machine, heater, cars...) to replace broken systems after a disaster. It didn't go out of control yet, but delays are getting very long.
    Regards,
    Etienne

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  3. Hello Ugo. If those comments you copied from the newspaper are representative , they make me glad I am glad I don’t write for a newspaper. But MarcoMx is correct that spending billions annually on killing people isn't likely to solve anything. ArtDeco.

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    1. There was much worse in previous articles!

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    2. I admire your tenacity. I guess someone has to say the things that most people just don't want to hear .
      ArtDeco.

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  4. Britain shouldn't have built the railway system in India or Sudan, for instance, destroying all British coal reserves in 200 years or so - to the ground - playing an Empire...

    The coal burned and now gone is much more valuable than the assumed late Empire...

    Our Empire today shouldn't force war-torn nations, in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Ukraine, Russia and Shanghai - giving up their finite fossil resources by the agency of war - practically looted, too - playing an Empire...

    "Crude oil is much too valuable to be burned as a fuel" - Kenneth S. Deffeyes

    Climate Change movement should stand firm against manufacturing weapons and waging wars worldwide - or Climate Change movement is a demonstration on how fossil fuels are dangerously hypnotic to humans - the stuff even causes humans utter partiality, severe double personality and collapse - not Climate Change...

    Centralised global authorities, such as our Empire and its Climate Change movement - must realise on day soon - finite fossil resources never build lasting powers - ask the late British Empire...

    Thermodynamics remains the Supreme power - always...

    "In any system of energy, Control is what consumes energy the most.
    No energy store holds enough energy to extract an amount of energy equal to the total energy it stores.
    No system of energy can deliver sum useful energy in excess of the total energy put into constructing it.
    This universal truth applies to all systems.

    Energy, like time, flows from past to future"

    Wailing.

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  5. I was surprised by your hypothesis in late articles concerning 'renewable energy' replacing fossil fuels, as did few other readers of your blog. I am not trying to undermine this concept, although - I must admit - I am quite sceptical.

    I have a few questions regarding this idea:
    1. how do you imagine the solution to intermittency of these energy sources? are we going to store this energy to align production with consumption? if yes, what technology is able to store this much energy in daily, monthly and seasonal cycles? is it scalable to include all world countries? if not, how do you visualize the societal changes to consume electricity according to very unstable supply?
    2. how do you see transition/continuation of heavy industry production - chemical, steel, concrete - all mostly FF derivatives? did anyone design full industrial cycle for base metals and meterials required for XXI century industrial production? including transport? where can I find blueprints for this kind of plan?
    3. have you taken into account latest report from Simon Michaux, concerning limitations of mineral extraction? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRGVqBScBRE&t=160s&ab_channel=SimonP.Michaux). How are we going to solve this issue?

    All the best for you Ugo and your whole commentariat.

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    1. It is not something that can be answered in a few lines. We have discussed this subject in a recent paper at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 that you may wish to read. In short, it is not a question of "problems" vs. "solutions," but you framed it correctly when you asked about "visualizing the societal changes" that we'll experience in the future. The system is evolving. It has now tools that didn't exist before that can provide cheap electric power, wind and PV. The peculiarity of these tools is that they do not need rare minerals (or can be designed not to), so bypassing most of the objections from Michaux (they have their weight at the systemic level, though). So, in my opinion, the system will evolve to accommodate these new sources, working around their limitations by changing itself. If the new tools cannot provide 100% energy at the same price all the year round, then the system will evolve in such a way not to need 100% energy at the same price the year round (that's something that my friend, TINA, knows very well). Of course, as all complex systems do, it will try to stick to the old ways as long as possible -- but this won't be possible for long (TINA rules). And so, things will change, no matter how that's rabidly denied by a few commenters on a minor blog kept by a weird Italian guy. :-)

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    2. The system will change and adapt, there is no doubt. The question remains in which direction. As I know the history, and you know it much better, that in times of struggle people are becoming desperate. If we can't keep the economy working, which I can't see happening with less resources and energy supply, we can expect unemployment, riots, political tensions and finally revolutions and wars. This is how it worked in history. So the only way to keep social order and, quoting Yuval Noah Harari, find the way to "entertain 4 billion useless people" is to implement very harsh and brutal authoritarian state/states/blocks. And even then the population will not easy forgive their freedoms and rights. How do you see this social and international layer of transition?

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    3. You have a good point: "If we can't keep the economy working ..., we can expect unemployment, riots, political tensions and finally revolutions and wars." That's why we need to try to keep a minimum level of energy supply to the economy while we gradually steer to a cleaner and more efficient system. And I think that renewable energy is the only chance we have to do that. Not obvious at all, unfortunately, but at least it is a chance.

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    4. Thank you for the paper. Interesting. Are the source materials (previous anlyses) also available for reading/downloading?

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    5. Yes, there are several. Search for the work of people such as Christian Breyer, Marco Raugei, Harald Densing, and others. It is a rapidly moving field

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    6. The first reply from Ugo here answers so much unanswered on the previous blog post. A paradigm shift in how to think about renewables: 'They are what we will have, what can the system evolve to be like with that constraint".

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  6. Happy New Year Ugo!

    Good we are still here. The year is sure to bring surprises we can't even guess at yet. So take care of yourself, and keep preaching the realities.

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    1. Thank you, K-Dog. Let's hope we'll survive this 2023 unscathed.

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  7. "As for nuclear power, the costs are truly out of this world"

    Besides the fact that wind and solar are not dispatchable, if you include the extra costs of backup (ie. natural gas… Weren't wind+solar supposed to get us out of fossil fuel?) + upgrading the grid, and considering the cost is spread over the 50-80 years a nuclear plant can run… nuclear wins hands down.

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    1. You know, anonymous, I am always surprised by how people can so easily assume to be smarter than everyone else, actually smarter than hundreds of professionals working in a specific field. And hence come up with an explanation in three lines of why decades of research are all wrong, because they didn't take into account this or that point. So, thanks so much, and it was a pleasure to have you in these comments as an example of how not to comment.

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  8. Ugo Bardi, "Cortisol0" was not incomprehensible - he was ideologically aligned to Ted Kaczynski, and was blaming you as a physical scientist for contributing to the continued existence of industrial civilisation.

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  9. Dear Ugo, I wonder, do you mean the costs of nuclear energy are out of this world in monetary terms or EROI terms. To my ignorant medical mind keeping up with these matters as a hobby it seems like the EROI of nuclear is quite good (if we discard the very uncomfortable question of waste management for a moment, which maybe we should not).

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    1. Nobody knows what the EROI of nuclear is. You just can't measure it over the lifetime of a plant -- not just the 60 years of operation, but the decades it takes to process the nuclear waste. I was referring to pure monetary costs on the basis of Lazard's data. https://www.lazard.com/media/451881/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-150-vf.pdf. (note that these data do not take into account the strategic costs of defense of the plants -- that truly shoots costs to the stars).

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    2. One can never claim that "this barrel of crude oil is all what was needed to build this system" - no matter how long the system lasts in operation (forget about nuclear waste for a minute...)

      The barrel is only a product of unfathomable number of other barrels, mountains of coal, atmospheres of natural gas, sunshine, chemistry, geology, time, Life and all other externalities.

      As one cannot clear cut how much exactly the total energy was necessary to build a nuclear plant - the nuclear plant will NEVER pay off back the total energy put into constructing it...

      Denying this fact is not any Science, Technology or Economics - but rather evident Nations' Engineering and Social Darwinism...

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  10. Professor Bardi,
    Many decades ago, as a student architect in Canada, an assignment was to write a critique of Limits to Growth. To achieve an A meant debunking the book with the (favored economic) argument of ongoing material substitution!
    At the time, we also studied passive solar design of buildings, using Mazria's textbook.
    I retained an interest in passive solar design with several projects of varying success. Of course, over the years, building codes have demanded increasing energy efficiency and technical improvements in building products and design have kept pace.
    One technology I would love to see developed is reversible phase change materials (PCMs) cost-effective enough for the building industry, in particular for passive design. PCMs with freeze/thaw points at around room temperature are sought.
    There are some expired US patents by Dow Chemical involving calcium chloride hexahydrate which were never developed commercially, as far as I know.
    PCMs arrayed in buildings could address heat storage and overheating issues - ie the intermittency problem - on a diurnal or even longer basis.
    Admittedly, this is only a tiny slice of the global energy picture, but shelter is of course a basic human need and right.
    Professor, are you aware of any promising research on this subject in Europe?
    Robert Beckett

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    1. Hello, Robert. Thanks for this comment. I worked, some time ago, on reversible phase change materials. As a chemist, you may imagine that I found the idea fascinating. Yet, I found that there was little interest in the subject, so it was one of those things that disappeared in the dust of the years. Right now, I am sorry, I don't know anyone who is pursuing this line of research. But it is surely an interesting field. of study.

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  11. Hugo, lighten up and go watch Avatar. Your European colonial mindset has ruined the world. Two solar panels won't fix that.

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  12. Sr. Bardi, don't let the bastardi bring you down! (Although it seems you're immune to their slings and arrows anyway.) You've been at this doom-saying for decades now, then when you begin to voice optimism, you catch grief from the other direction. Take the reactions with amusement. I disagree with your current positive viewpoint, because I think the complexity needed for the energy systems you envision will be too much for our unravelling civilisation to handle. (I'm more in the Tainter/Greer/Automatic Earth catabolic collapse camp) I'm glad you continue to write, though, because it's good for Doomers to see the other side. Even though you're wrong. I wish you weren't, but by all means, carry one, signore.

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  13. no we have no change anymore we will all die in 2023 or 2024 say goodbye to your family and friends we are all death and renewable energy won't save us the words of dennis meadows

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  14. Hugo, I just want to say kudos and love to you. Although you overview all comments, you let all though. There is no censorship and you are not part of the the great reset! Let the science prevail, however just like the double slit experiment all it not what it seems.

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    1. I have to admit that I delete the comments which include personal insults or that, simply, repeat the same concept at infinitum (it is the technique known as the "Gish Gallop" -- you have to kill that horse, otherwise it will keep galloping forever). Apart from that, I try to let all comments pass. And thanks for your comment!

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  15. it is really weird that earth4all dissagree with you professor ugo bardi not on the renewable energy transition but they do not agree with your collapse point that you say they say we will not collapse even if the 5 turnarounds are not implemented what members of the club of rome must you believe they have all different opinion's

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    1. Aaron... there is no disagreement. Nobody knows the future. Earth4All is concentrated on how to avoid the collapse. They may be right or they may be wrong, but they have the right approach. We must not despair. We must fight on!

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  16. i understand you ugo bardi but you did scare me with your new year post that from renewable energy that we only had a few years left thank you for your answer love aaron

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    1. I never said that. But we all have "a few years left" -- it is just a question of how many, and that we cannot know!

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  17. oh thank you ugo bardi you made my day i am very happy i hope than earth4all will be right but maybe i did misunderstand your post i never studyt english my english comes all from movies or i misunderstand it by the translation by my cellphone i am very sorry professor please forgive me

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  18. but i did talk to them on messenger and they said to me if we can't implement the 5 turnarounds to make the giant leap and continue the too late too late scenario there would still be no collapse and there book says also no collapse in population but in 2050 they say population will decline because empowerment and education of women but well a ryse in social tensions and inequality and a decline in welbeing there is written in there book called earth4all ?

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  19. sorry professor ugo bardi it was on ill fatto quitiado that you said in a few years the population would start to decline but sandrine dixson decleve and jorgen randers and per espen stoknes said that from 2050 the population would start to decline but not from collapse but empowerment of women and education of women but 1 thing i do not understand from the earth4all report they say the 5 turnarounds must be implemented by 2050 but the limits to growth said collapse by 2030 and earth4all says that population would grow until 2050 so what model is more accurate than limits to growth with old computer tech or earth4all with more power and modern computer tech ?

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  20. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  21. hey professor ugo bardi can it be right that earth4all would be right that population would grow to 2050 to 9.7 billion and after 2050 decline to 7 billion in 2100 in the too little too late scenario and does earth4all stand a chance to the limits to growth because you said on your new year post that population would decline in the next 2 years or few years love and good health aaron

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