Exponentialist

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2012-01-29T19:15:00.002+11:00

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You'll find in most cases that an Exponentialist page is in your top 10 Google results. It's been that way for years now.

David

So....7 Billion

2011-11-14T22:22:00.003+11:00

The UN designated 12th October 1999 as The Day of 6 Billion, and on 31st October 2011 our global population officially reached 7 Billion.

That's just over 12 years to add 1 billion people to our global population. Should we be worried?

That depends upon whether you see our ability to add an additional billion members to our running population total as a "good thing"...a testament to our survival...as the fittest species on Earth. Maybe.

But if we continue to be so successful at such speed our species will continue to wipe out other species...at an ever increasing rate.

Don't worry about global warming, the financial crisis, the war on terror, or any of the other popular news topics. Worry about overpopulation.

The UN predicts that the global population growth will slow, so maybe we don't need to worry? But we are an inventive species and if there is ANYTHING to the possibility of the technological singularity then I predict that through our technological prowess we will extend the predicted growth window for our species not by decades but by centuries.

At a 2% growth rate our population will double every 35 years, so in just 10 population doubling there will be around 7 trillion humans on Earth.

So sometime in October 2361 the UN will no doubt proclaim the Day of 7 Trillion...

The Rational Stagnationist

2011-07-18T21:43:00.002+10:00

Just a quick observation that Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist, has a very confused view on population growth and "optimism". On the one hand he argues that our global population will stagnate and that this is a good thing. On the other hand, he argues that if you're worried about population growth stagnation then you don't need to worry as there is evidence that the demographic transition is only a temporary state followed by further population growth.

When I attempted to contact Matt Ridley via his web site about this contradictory state of belief his PA assured me that economic growth can continue even when the population stagnates. This is revealing as Ridley seems to believe that the world population will stagnate, despite the evidence he specifically notes for those concerned about economic stagnation caused by population stagnation that world population will not stagnate.

Regardless of whether or not you think population growth will or should stagnate or just keep going, one thing that is certain is that population growth cannot both stagnate and keep going at the same time!

David

Sustainable Population Growth

2011-01-11T22:43:00.002+11:00

In Australia we now a minister for sustainable population - Tony Burke. Whilst this is a positive step forwards, it begs the question what does sustainable population growth mean?

The answer, unfortunately, is that no rate of population growth is sustainable. For the nitpickers, a population growing at zero percent is not growing, but yes, if you could somehow arrange a zero population growth rate every year then yes it would be sustainable. Also, a population which attempts to sustain a negative population growth rate will become extinct.

That leaves populations that grow at positive growth rates, which is the main subject of this specific blog post.

Taking Australia's very modest population of roughly 22 million people, just 10 population doublings would result in over 22 billion Australians. How quickly a population doubles depends upon the annual growth rate. At 1%, our population would double roughly every 70 years and at 2% it would double roughly every 35 years. If the population rate varied between these historical rates then the Australia population would double somewhere between 35 and 70 years.

So, who thinks that 22 billion people living in Australia within 350 to 700 years is sustainable? And that's just the Australian population, growing at "modest" historical rates...

David

Dawkins and Malthus

2010-12-10T22:18:00.002+11:00

For those of you that have read Dawkins you will have found scant direct reference to Malthus. Yet Dawkins nonetheless clearly expresses many Malthusian views. This is the subject of my article Dawkins - An Exponentialist View.

In this brief blog post I ask Mr Dawkins to carefully read Malthus's essay on population (1st and 6th editions) and consider not only Malthus' enormous influence on Darwin's theory of Natural Selection but also a subject more important than evolutionary theory...a subject Dawkins himself has written on...namely unsustainable population growth.

Then quote Malthus. Don't just rely upon Matt Ridley to do your reading for you.

David

Survival Of The Fittest

2010-12-09T00:19:00.002+11:00

What does it mean, in evolutionary terms, to be "fit"? One explanation can be given in Malthusian terms as the growth rate of a population was deemed, by evolutionist R A Fisher (in 1930), as as the measure of fitness of a genotype within an environment. Or, to put it bluntly, the higher the population growth rate then the "fitter" the population.

This may indeed be true and relates to an evolutionary principle known as differential reproduction.

However, the fitter a population is then the quicker it reaches the carrying capacity of its environment...the limits to growth.

Hence, fitness is both a blessing and a curse for any population. The fit may outbreed the unfit, but will always face limits to growth.

David

Dick Smith's Population Puzzle - My Initial Thoughts

2010-08-14T22:41:00.004+10:00

On Thursday 12th August, on prime time TV, Dick Smith's Population Puzzle aired on national Australian TV on the ABC. This was followed by a lively debate on the ABC's Q&A, or QANDA.

I admire Dick Smith for raising the profile of the challenging and often unpopular question of sustainable population growth. Dick credits his daughter for raising the question of the elephant in the room in relation to the impact of human population growth on global warming. The use of this English idiom in relation to population is not new, such as Paul Chefurka's Population - The Elephant In The Room.

This idiom was repeated by Melbourne Labour MP Kelvin Thomson in his speech to Parliament in August 2009. Perhaps the meme then replicated from here to Dick's daughter.

Dick took great pains to separate the topics of racism and sustainable growth. This too is admirable, because controlling population is not a matter of race. It does not matter what race the members of any population belong. No population of any any race can sustain population growth - more on this later.

A few critics in qanda argued that Australia is very large and its population of 22 million is so tiny in comparison with the available land that any mention of overpopulation or sustainable population is laughable. However, such opinions are borne of ignorance of the aridness of Australia's landscape compared with all other continents except frozen Antarctica.

It is no coincidence that 95% of Australia's population lives on roughly 5% of its land. Unfortunately, this is also the most arable land so urban sprawl into such land will inevitably reduce Australia's ability to feed itself.

Much was made of the social impact of overpopulation. It's true - as American Science-Fiction author stated, human dignity and democracy cannot survive overpopulation.

However, the most obvious omission from Dick's program and the qanda debate was any discussion of population growth rates. It is clear that not even an annual Australian growth rate of 1% per annum is sustainable as this would result in 10 populations doublings from 22 million to over 22 billion - 3 times the Earth's current population - all living in Australia!

Greens leader Bob Brown at least had the guts to mention Malthus, who warned of the issues off unsustainable growth back in 1798. He was right, but presented a flawed argument. The few vague mentions of Ponzi schemes and exponential growth missed the point that variable rates of growth are just as powerful and unsustainable as any fixed or constant rates of growth.

Although Human Global Ecophagy - the total consumption of our planet by humans - can never happen we can still create a catastrophe of epic proportions within just a few centuries. For example, imagine if our human population doubled just 5 times from 6 billion in 1999 to 192 billion in mere centuries. Imagine the environmental impact of 192 billion people.

In the end the big business addiction to economic growth driven by population growth - so enticing and irresistible to government - seems destined to hold sway for now.

Dick is right - we must end our addiction to growth at all costs.

Thanks for reading,

David Coutts

Eating the Earth

2010-06-16T21:57:00.002+10:00

We are all regularly referred to as consumers, but have you ever taken this concept to the extreme? Well, if not, imagine humanity consuming the entire planet. This blog will explain how an everyday experience can start you on your way.

An everyday experience for many of us is getting in a lift (or elevator) - every work day I do this at least 4 times a day, as I am one of those people that prefers to leave my place of work at lunchtime and breath some relatively fresh air.

The next time that you take a lift make a note of the lift capacity. This is the number of people that the lift is rated to carry, and the total weight of those people. This is a simple (yet surprisingly variable) way of determining the average weight of a human being (number of kg divided by number of individuals).

Now, the next step is to imagine that human population growth (that is, population growth at a perceptible positive rate) is somehow desirable. For the moment, assume historical rates of global human population growth. Here we are talking about growth rates between 1% and 2% per annum. It sounds relatively harmless, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it isn't. Using the Rule of 70 it is easy to calculate that at 1% a population doubles every 70 years and at 2% it doubles every 35 years. This is how our global population doubled from 3 billion in 1960 to 6 billion in 1999 - just 39 years.

Take any average human weight between 65 kg and 80 kg (which is what most lift designers seem to assume) and you will find that our global human population would outweigh the Earth in just over 1500 years at a 2% annual growth rate or over 3000 years at a 1% growth rate. I've described this scenario in more detail in my article on Human Global Ecophagy.

In evolutionary terms this is the blink of an eye.

We are assured by the UN and other "authorities" that human population growth will "stabilise" at something like 0.5% per annum by 2050. This is not good enough.

I ask you to get the facts for yourself, and do the math. You will find that no positive rate of population growth - not even a variable positive growth rate - is remotely sustainable.

Essentially we have two options, which are not mutually exclusive:

We can learn to live sustainably on Earth, which means at growth rates very close to zero.
We can learn to live and grow in space at positive growth rates.

Personally, I would prefer that we learn to do both. The first option, alone, is too depressing to contemplate. The second option, alone, is irresponsible if we care about life on Earth.

Thanks for reading,

David Coutts

Malthusians Vs Cornucopians

2010-05-16T12:35:00.005+10:00

The arguments around overpopulation and sustainable living tend to fall into two camps - the Malthusians and the Cornucopians. Each camp is sure it is right, and derides the other. The problem is that the arguments of both camps are flawed, and thus we are no clearer in understanding this very important topic.

The Malthusians get their name from Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, who wrote the first edition of An Essay On The Principle Of Population in 1798 and the (final) sixth edition in 1826. Malthusians include Paul R. Ehrlich who wrote The Population Bomb (1968) and The Population Explosion (1990) and predicted widespread famines by the year 2000. A contemporary Malthusian is Professor Albert Bartlett who has lectured on population doubling over 1500 times and declares the human inability to understand the exponential function as our greatest failing.

Cornucopians get their name from ancient Greek mythology in reference to the horn of plenty or cornucopia. Another name for the Cornucopians is anti-Malthusians. Their most famous proponent, and nemesis of Paul R. Ehrlich, was economist Julian Simon. A contemporary Cornucopian is Ronald Bailey of Reason magazine.

The Malthusian argument goes like this. Population grows exponentially and so will inevitably outstrip any resource base, leading to mass famine. The Malthusian use of the concept of exponential growth is nearly always a constant rate of growth from which we derive - via the Rule Of 70 - the population doubling period. Hence, a growth rate of 1% results in a doubling period of 70 years whereas a growth rate of 2% results in a doubling period of 35 years. It sounds simple enough, so what's the problem?

The problem is that no population grows at a constant rate and hence it is claimed that no population grows exponentially. This the Cornucopians point out with glee, thus concluding that the Malthusians are wrong and that we have nothing to worry about. After all, it is claimed, humans are infinitely inventive and the more people we have then the more potential there is for human inventiveness. Technology, fuelled by human inventiveness, will surely find a way to feed humanity forever (or at least for the next several million years). So runs the Cornucopian argument.

So who is right? Should we worry about population growth, overpopulation and limits to growth?

Well, the Cornucopians are right to point out that populations do not grow via constant rate exponential growth. They never have, and they never will. However, given that populations grow via variable rates of growth, the question is whether or not such growth is comparable in power to constant rate exponential growth.

The answer is that...yes, variable rate population growth is comparable to constant rate exponential growth. This is clearly illustrated in my article The Scales of 70 and then proven in detail in the accompanying article The Scales Of e.

A classic example is the population doubling of our global population of 3 billion in 1960 to 6 billion in 1999. That's just 39 years, and didn't require any constant rate of exponential growth. Interestingly enough, the growth rates were roughly between 1% and 2% for those 39 years. Remember, classic exponential growth at a constant rate can be roughly modelled using the Rule of 70, which would have predicted doubling periods of 70 years for a 1% growth rate and 35 years for a 2% growth rate. So the actual population doubling period of 39 years is nicely bracketed by the predicted exponential growth doubling periods of 70 and 35 years.

Hence although the Malthusians are presented a flawed version of their argument they are essentially right. Variable rate population growth can outstrip any resource base in time frames that are exactly comparable to constant rate exponential growth.

Thanks for reading,

David

I'm back!

2010-04-26T12:40:00.002+10:00

Hi,

I've been inactive with this blog since 2006, but I've just reactivated it and intend to post more regularly from now on.

In the last few years I have concentrated on revising and improving the material on my Exponentialist web site, plus I've added some new material:

Thanks for reading!

David

What does Exponentialist mean?

2006-02-03T19:07:00.000+11:00

This article explains who or what an Exponentialist is:

Exponentialist

Definition

Exponentialist - An exponent of the exponent, with particular reference to the natural processes of replication.

Here is a link to my Exponentialist homepage

Just like the website, this blog is dedicated to exploring all aspects of the exponential growth and exponential shrinkage of replicator populations. This could include any life form based on cells, and biological viruses. It can include genes and memes, Von Neuman machines, artificial life, computer viruses, and molecular nanotechnology assemblers. It can also include loans (eg. mortgages) and investments (eg. stock market shares, bank accounts). Thus, Exponentialist theory applies equally to the worlds of population ecology, population dynamics, demography, evolutionary theory, and finance. The approach taken is to make extensive use of population doubling, just as Malthus did, and to combine that with population halving via my own New Malthusian Scale

A more sophisticated approach is taken via my Scales of 70, and Scales of e.

The result is a revised Malthusian Growth Model that I call the Couttsian Growth Model. Essentially, all I'm saying is that all populations of all species always grow via variable rate of compound interest (including positive and negative rates).

It's an incredibly simple idea, and yet it challenges long-held beliefs regarding the nature of exponential growth itself. It restores to its rightful place Thomas Robert Malthus' Principle of Population, both as the foundation of population ecology and population dynamics and the entire field of demography. Through what I call Malthusian Selection, Exponentialist theory also challenges the level of selection and the pace of selection in evolutionary theory, but does so in the context of population (not species).

Articles for peer review

2006-02-03T18:46:00.000+11:00

Hi,

I'm looking for people to formerly peer review two of my articles at Academic Publishing Wiki:

Malthusian Selection

Couttsian Growth Model

Constructive criticism is very welcome.