Energy Policy
Arithmetic, Population and Energy, Part 2
Revision A
For the love of the human
race.
Friday, March 21, 2014
Our Thesis
We investigated Dr. Bartlett’s data, and observed that his
data need updating. We attempted a
partial update of the data, but this is an ongoing task that requires incessant
continued surveillance. Maintaining a
good, up-to-date data set is the most difficult part of the mathematical
problem. GIGO explains why.
We added new data for population and land use in order to
start the investigation of population saturation. This is just a bare start. We hope that advocates will arise, who will
carry such investigations to a much greater level of completion. In particular, we hope that experts will arise,
who will have the technical ability and determination to uncover the realities
of human health and welfare throughout the world.
The “cultural mandate” needs to be reexamined with a view to
discovering what the concepts of “fill” and “subdue” mean; and more
importantly, how they are to be balanced.
We tentatively suggest that many more people might consider celibacy in divine
service as a lifestyle option. This would
enable those who are compelled to marry to live without incurring unnecessary guilt.
These obstacles can
defeat us: 1. Unwillingness to change in
the face of the facts. 2. Inadvertently
or deliberately ignoring the facts. 3. Failure
to collect accurate, up-to-date data. 4.
Inability to find sufficient meaningful solutions in time to avert catastrophic
failure.
Arithmetic, Population and Energy, Part 2
http://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_population_energy_video1.html Better results were achieved by playing the
video clip directly from this site, rather than by linking through
YouTube. Click on the arrow in the
middle of the picture, rather than on the black bar at the top. This is Part 2.
In Part 2, Dr. Bartlett makes some applications of the concept
of doubling time to some specific areas: inflation and population. We embellished his ideas and added a new area
of our own: namely, consumption.
t
(doubling time) ≡
ln (2) / ln (b)
t
(doubling time) ≈ 70% // r%/t
b is the growth rate plus 1 per
unit time. b for a 5%
per year growth rate is 1.05 per year.
The
problem of inflation.
An inflation rate of 7% per year yields a
precise doubling time of 10.24 years, and a rule of 70 estimate
of only 10 years. This
means that the dollar in your pocket will be worth fifty cents of real money in
ten years.
If your dollar is invested in a savings account at the bank
at 2% interest, it will be worth two dollars at future face value
in 35 years. However, in
real dollars, your savings dollar will only be worth twenty-five cents
in twenty-eight years, and roughly fifteen cents in thirty-five
years.
So, don’t save your money; instead, carefully purchase
quality durable goods as you can pay cash for them. “Get that gall bladder surgery today.”[1] The suit, however, is a bad investment,
because it will either wear out or grow out of style too quickly.
You can see that investment in the face of inflation is a
difficult problem with which to cope. It
is made more difficult when we consider that almost all investments operate
from a Dutch Book.[2] Worse yet, many of them are outright frauds,
such as Bunko or Ponzi Schemes.[3] Gambling is often safer, because the bookie
or casino usually won’t mind telling you what their cut is. In the world of investments the cut
frequently exists in multiple hidden fees of possibly 40% or more. Between these hidden fees and taxes, you will
be lucky if you clear 4%, which will put your buck at two dollars
future face value in 17.5 years: but it will only be worth a little more than fifty
cents in real money.
The
problem of population.
Dr. Bartlett suggests that overpopulation is a problem. He may be on to something here. Population growth at 1.3% per year
yields a precise doubling time of 53.66 years, and a rule of 70
estimate of 53 years, provided that we round down to err on the
safe side. Population growth at 1.7%
per year yields a precise doubling time of 41.12 years,
and a rule of 70 estimate of 41 years. His observations are well taken. The population glut along the I-25 corridor,
fondly known as Little Silicon Valley, has transformed the landscape from a
pleasant quiet ranching community, into a seething ugly monster.
He discusses options that increase population, options that
decrease population, and notes that nature will chose from the right hand list,
if we do not chose ourselves.
From a Christian standpoint, the key Bible passage on the
subject is found in Genesis. The
following Bible passage is often called the cultural mandate.
And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness:
and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the cattle,
all the earth, and every creeping thing that creeps on earth. So God created man in His own image, in the image
of God, He created him; He created them male and female. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be
fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of
the sea, over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves on earth.”[4]
Because of the expression “fill” or “replenish” many
Christians, not just Roman Catholics, are reluctant to limit their family size:
thus telling God how and when they will submit to His command. That being said, perhaps it is a fair
question to ask, When will the earth be filled?
With this in mind we have completed a population study to attempt to
evaluate the saturation density of population.
Our population data showed a current world population of 7
billion, 162 million people, and a United States population of 317
million people. Of course these
numbers change every day, so we arbitrarily froze the numbers at what we hope
are reasonable values: but in a year or so, they will be hopelessly out of
date. These are numbers you should look
up for yourself.
The world has over 4 billion acres under
cultivation, and another 10 billion acres in fixed crops, such as
forests, fruit trees, bushes, etc.: an aggregate in excess of 14 billion
acres of useable land worldwide.
The United States has over 1 billion acres of useable
land. Again, these are numbers where you
will profit most by doing your own research
Dividing the usable acres by the population yields the
number of acres per person: the world average is 2.01 acres per person;
the United States, 3.67; India, 0.45; China, 0.66;
Russia, 16.04; Brazil, 7.49. We collected data for nearly every country imaginable.
The reasonable question now becomes, Can a family of four
live comfortable, healthy lives on 8 acres, or 14 acres? Since families are already living in places
like India and China on around 2 acres per family of four, mostly
without the benefit of fossil fuels, perhaps we should investigate their health
and welfare to get a better picture of their situation. However, families living in colder climes
cannot get by on 2 acres, because they have lost soil fertility,
have limited growing seasons, have more or less precipitation, etc. The difference between one crop per
year and four crops per year makes an obvious difference
that must be considered. The one-hundredth
meridian marks the approximate boundary for semi-arid land in the United
States. Land to the west of the
one-hundredth meridian is not very suitable for most cultivation. Wheat is successfully grown there. But we must wonder about the continued
success of milo and other crops without artificial irrigation, chemical
fertilization, and chemical pest control, all of which depend on fossil
fuels. Much of this land is only fit for
grazing livestock.
A first guess at population saturation might lie between 1
and 3 acres worldwide, or between 3 and 5
acres in the United States. This is a
problem that requires further investigation and better analysis methods. Under current living conditions it seems
unlikely that we have reached saturation in most parts of the world.
However, those conditions will change drastically with the
total depletion of fossil fuels. Even if
we are shrewd enough to prevent massive death rates due to environmental
exposure and famine, our life styles will be radically changed.
We will revert to a
cultural model similar to that of 1850.
We will then discover that one of the chief sources of
energy will be human muscle. Draft
animals will also become critically important.
Under these conditions, we may well need more people, not less. These are questions that we need to ask our
best thinkers. Since these questions
have broad moral implications, we need to ask our most profound Christian
thinkers as well. The most knowledgeable
soil conservation, biological efficiency, and land-use expert is the plain dirt
farmer, forester, orchardist, or rancher.
In many ways the population problem is not an overpopulation
problem; but rather, it is an overcrowding problem. People tend to drift toward hyper-dense
cities: perhaps this has always been the case.
If and when fossil fuels are depleted, cities will suffer most; they
will become the initiation sites where disease, exposure, and famine hit the
hardest; and are most difficult to deal with.
Simple burial may even become an impossibility. The concentrated stench may be difficult to
cope with. Emotions will tend toward
panic.
I believe that we need to maintain the world at its ideal
population saturation point in obedience to God’s command: but this leaves me
with personal moral dilemmas I cannot resolve: at least, not by myself.
The
problem of consumption.
Dr. Bartlett will address this problem later; but, we
believe that it is the fundamental problem.
Inflation is a monetary problem, which exists strictly
because of human foolishness: it can be stopped whenever the ruling individuals
decide to stop it. Money in the United
States is presently a mythology built out of nearly worthless paper and
electronic transfers: it has been this way ever since money was divorced from
gold and silver standards. There is
nothing new about this. The Romans cut
their smaller coins with lesser metals, but kept the face values the same. However, they had the good sense not to
meddle with items like a talent. In the
United States the value of money is determined by the Federal Reserve Bank, an
independent corporation, with some oversight from the President. When the Federal Reserve decides to flood the
economy with additional paper money, the value of the money in your pocket
diminishes accordingly. This has little
to do with the loss of limited resources.
Population is a serious problem, but it is in part dependent
on the consumption of limited resources.
We cannot really resolve the problem of population until we solve the
consumption problem: because population stability is a matter of the
consumption per person; and because the whole problem will shift with the
exhausting of fossil fuels. So, we believe
that the consumption problem must be solved first. When the consumption problem is solved, then
we will be in position to tackle the population problem.
Using a fair share. Dr.
Bartlett will later use the example of gasoline. The world’s fair share use of gasoline is
about two quarts, half a gallon per person per day. The problem is painfully obvious; some people
are using more than their fair share of gasoline. This is true of every fixed resource
imaginable, but it is also true of many renewable assets.
Avoiding uncontrolled depletion. Moreover, fair sharing does not address the
fact that even if everyone is limited to their fair share we will still run out
of fixed limited resources, someday. If
we deliberately reduce the world population, which amounts to some sort of
wicked scheme of mass murder, the remaining people, unrestrained, will rapidly
double their consumption, and the problem will not be resolved.
Running out of fixed
limited resources is an inevitability that needs to be managed globally.
Dealing with population must be done after or at the same
time as we learn to budget and manage.
Once we determine how to manage fixed limited resources we can figure
out how many people it will take to accomplish that task and aim at getting
there.
Energy policy. At
present no real energy policy exists, not in America. The United States has not had a real energy
policy since the Carter administration.
If we do not change the way we think about consumption, we will quickly
run out of fossil fuels.
What happens next?
One of the next things that will happen, in addition to death by
environment exposure and famine, will be the unbridled stripping of
forests. Since we never learned how to
budget or manage fossil fuels, there is no good reason to believe that we will
suddenly learn to budget or manage forests.
As we strip the forests, we will deplete the available atmospheric
oxygen, and the world will become uninhabitable. The good news is that once man is gone the
earth will eventually recover on its own.
We must change! We must change the way we think about
consumption. We must stop thinking in
terms of growth. We must start thinking
in terms of reduction, conservation, and sharing.
Our Conclusion
Dr. Bartlett tends to see this problem as an overpopulation
problem. This overlooks that fact that,
even if we reduced the population by half, we would still be confronted by
widespread death due to exposure and famine, whenever fossil fuels are totally
depleted. Hopefully, our deaths due to
war might decrease. A population
solution does not solve the overconsumption problem, or other problems. If we cannot find suitable math models for
sustainability, we hope to write some new ones.
This, we hope, will be the start of a mathematics of sustainability.
[1]
Dr. Bartlett’s joke
[2]
Professional gamblers hedge their bets in bookmaking operations. They take a cut of each bet by manipulating odds
and matching your bet against an opposing gambler. You are never betting against the bookmaker,
you are always betting against an opposing gambler: one of you will win, while
the other loses. However, the bookmaker,
who has no interest in either victory, always wins, because his cut is found in
the difference between the odds he offers you and the odds he offers your
opponent. In other words, the bookmaker
has a hidden fee for each bet he takes.
[3] These
are outright illegal, fraudulent activities.
However, they are scarcely worse that many legal investments, such as
pyramid schemes, most funds, and many retirement plans. Moreover, investments, like funds, insurance,
mortgages, and retirement plans are politically leveraged to control
government: so, in many ways, our own savings are being used to manipulate us
against our own will, and defeat the whole electoral process, the rule of law.
[4]
Genesis 1:26-28
[5]
Genesis 2:15
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