Prof Bartlett on exponential growth

Albert Bartlett has given the same presentation 1,540 times. That's the equivalent of once a day, every day, for more than four years. But the 81-year-old physics professor emeritus at the University of Colorado has spread things out a bit. He has been teaching his lesson on the power - and danger - of exponential growth since 1969.

This week, he's presenting "Arithmetic, Population and Energy" four times - twice at CU in Boulder, once at CU-Denver, and, on Friday, at California State University, Fresno. He expects to present it between 30 and 40 times this year, mostly at CU-Boulder ... these statistics - and many, many others - are in a book published last year. It's called "The Essential Exponential!: For the Future of Our Planet."

It's all in the mathematics of compound growth. For investors, a constant 7 percent return doubles your capital in 10 years. But the same dynamic can be calamitous to the environment, Bartlett contends. For example, a population of 10,000 growing at a constant 7 percent rate will hit 10 million a century later.

Bartlett rails against population growth, which, he says, "never pays for itself." He says building more reservoirs and highways doesn't solve problems, but rather invites even more growth and bigger hurdles down the road. Politicians lack the will to view population growth as something to be avoided and not invited, he says.

... but doesn't Bartlett ever tire of saying the same thing - however interesting - over and over and over? "I feel sort of like Billy Graham. I'm an evangelist. You've got to get it out to the people," Bartlett said. "I'll do it as long as I can."

When oil peaks ...

atimes.com :

Fertilizer, DVDs, rubber, cheap flights, plastics and metals. None of these things have anything in common, right? Think again. An ingredient in all of them, in one form or another, is oil.

Oil is the precious primer of the world economic engine, making it hum. Oil provides 40% of the world's energy needs, and nearly 90% of all transportation. It's also a building block for many products and goods. Cut supplies of this natural resource and life as we know it could change.

But while some experts say the world runs no risk of running out of oil, others disagree. Sounding the alarm is the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas. Its president is Kjell Aleklett, a physics professor at Sweden's Uppsala University.

"[During] the next 30 years we will find more than 150, maybe 200, but probably not, but 150 billion barrels of oil is roughly what you're going to find," Aleklett said. "And during the same period, we will consume 1,000 [billion barrels of oil]. So that means we are now digging deep into the reserves we have at the moment." ...

"Keep your freedom and democracy to yourself"

english.pravda.ru :

The international community does not want George W. Bush's Freedom and Democracy neither does it want its Hearts and Minds won over by Shock and Awe tactics, thank you very much. If George Bush was elected President of the United States of America, why does he address himself to the rest of the world?

... the international community is made up of hundreds of sovereign nations with models of government which reflect in some cases thousands of years of history and culture, which is to be respected, not obliterated in a wave of blind arrogance fuelled by the greed of Washington's invisible masters.

The international community does not want, nor does it need, the model imposed by a country barely 200 years old, with serious human rights problems, whose history is associated with ethnic cleansing of its native population, whose history is based upon the illegal deportation of races, a country whose military forces even today practise torture and which has concentration camps in more than one continent where the terms of the Geneva Convention are broken.

George Bush can keep his freedom and democracy to himself and to his own country. Nobody asked for his opinion abroad and nobody is interested in his opinion abroad. Each and every movement of the US regime outside its territory will be seen as belligerence, interference, and arrogance and is bound to produce an exponential reaction of hatred in the four corners of the Earth.

- What can I say, whoa! Some strong words there, and coming from Russia too, but really, one cannot simply deny the above out of hand. It's becoming a trend, it looks like. When recent episodes of the popular Japanese anime series Ghost in the Shell SAC referred to "the American Empire", that was kind of telling, as it reflects on how the rest of the world looks at America nowadays.

Of course, with US peaking in the 1970's, and now using up 25% of the entire world's oil output with only 5% of the global population, there's bound to be harsh words (and worse) between America and, well, a whole lot of other countries. Though I am observing from half a world away from the US, in a country nominally allied to the US but also with strong ties to all the rest of Asia and Europe, all this makes for rather, hmm, disconcerting reading.