I watched the 8 videos of Dr. Albert A. Bartlett’s presentation on Arithmetic, Population, and Energy on the youtube, and I was way creeped out. Doc was all about trying to get people to viscerally feel what happens when you have an exponential growth rate. And he did a nice job with examples, and charts, and tables to illustrate how one should think about exponential growth.
For example, based on a world population annual growth rate of 1.3%, the world population would reach a density of one person per square meter of land in 780 years. That blows my mind. In ten human lifespans we will have overrun the planet.
This guy lays out a dire situation for our energy consumption, and a gross misrepresentation by the media and the government about our ability to sustain our energy consumption. Not a pleasant message. Based on the current predictions we hit peak oil production in 2004, and it’s all downhill from there.
My takeaway is that it’s a race between the exponential growth rates in technology and the exponential consumption of oil. If we can successful use the energy in oil to develop new sources of energy, then we live. It sounds like the new solar technology starts to become commercially available in five to ten years, with who knows how long to switch over. So we may have a shot.