[rsj_hn]

I remember the Club of Rome was the first to do these models, assuming peak oil and the collapse of western civilization based on resource constraints. They would have these coupled differential equations, similar to predator-prey, calculating cost of extracting resources and the resulting declines in food production and thus population.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome

But I thought all of that had fallen out of fashion by the early 1980s when oil prices fell and it was discovered that you don't have stable relationships or known parameters for most of this stuff.

[cryptonector]

Exactly. You can have very sophisticated, non-linear, dynamic models developed over many years by brilliant people, then still see the models fail miserably.

[dredmorbius]

World3, implemented in the Python module submitted here, is the Club of Rome model.