[VLM]

Also revolution. Automation vs labor vs 1848 and all that. Where there is food vs where there are hungry mouths are not obligated to match up as they do now.

It would be interesting to analyze food production capability at various levels of petroleum production and then analyze the probability of those various levels of petroleum production. The days of powering your oxen with some acres of hay are long gone, takes quite a few calories of fossil fuels to generate each calorie of food.

Fossil water is another interesting concept. The east of the USA has more water than we know what to do with, we'll be OK, but the west currently lives off rapidly emptying aquifers, and once those are pumped dry, the population will revert to 1700s to 1800s levels, possibly a little lower. Farmable land minus aquifer irrigated land, will be an interesting math problem for our kids.

The roll forward of progress was heavily advertised and seems orderly. The roll back is going to be completely disorganized and chaotic.

[oblio]

If only one of the richest and most high tech US states was nearer to some huge water source... Unfortunately it is landlocked.

Jokes aside, it won't be easy, it won't be nice, but I'm pretty sure that if it comes to it California could start desalinating the Pacific. It will provide them with something to do for all that cheap solar power that's probably going their way in 20 years or so.

Once they get the ball rolling they could even export that fresh water, if it becomes so scarce...

[maxerickson]

Energy will be cheaper in 10 years than it has ever been in history.

Progress is pretty likely to continue.

[baq]

Can the World Get Richer Forever?

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2015/03/bbc-questions-in...

[maxerickson]

So make a point. That I have optimism for my lifetime doesn't mean I'm blind to there being real actual physical limits.

OP is talking like grim meathook future is coming quick (linking food production to petroleum production). I was answering that.

[marcosdumay]

I dunno¹, but solar will probably make energy much cheaper in the coming decades.

1 - Of course, obviously I do know. The answer is just completely irrelevant to the discussion.

[rokosbasilisk]

wow fascinating read.

If global resources are finite, it would explain the drive to colonize space.

[philipkglass]

Global resources are finite. The resources of the solar system are finite. The visible universe is finite.

Finite is not another word for "meager."

Discussions of physical resource limits would be better if pessimistic prognosticators did not write as if finite-is-meager, and if optimistic prognosticators did not write as if plentiful-is-infinite.

[rokosbasilisk]

finite resources on earth can lead to meagar resources which stop infinite growth is what I took from that paper.

So we'd have to get resources from elsewhere like asteroid mining or space colonization.

[philipkglass]

Fundamental properties of nature, like the finite speed of light, preclude infinite growth. To maintain 2% annual growth in human energy consumption, in just a few thousand years we'd need to have built Dyson swarms around every star in our galaxy (and beyond). Faster-than-light travel becomes necessary to sustain that growth rate in less than 2600 years.

The BBC asked a bad question and got an obvious answer. (Maybe the badness and obviousness aren't apparent up front if you don't have a physical science background.)

Asking if fixed-percentage economic growth can continue forever is rather like asking if Moore's Law can continue forever. No, neither can continue forever. That doesn't mean that things get bad after the growth phase. Somehow both optimists and pessimists conflate "the end of growth" with "the end of prosperity." That's ridiculous, IMO. The median citizen is much better off in low-economic-growth (and negative population growth) Japan than in rapidly growing Bangladesh.