The power of constant growth.

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[Lobes]

I'd like to share a presentation that has helped form my views with regards to sustainability and resource management. Its by Professor Albert Bartlett who is a physicist from the University of Colorado in the USA.

In his presentation Dr Bartlett makes some observations about the mathematical certainties that come with constant growth. He has a clear, easy to absorb style of imparting information and makes good use of analogies and anecdotes.

Its quite a long piece (10'000 words)  so perhaps best to read when you have a spare hour or so. It is also available as a video or audio file.

Please enjoy and feel free to comment on his ideas.

It is available here: http://globalpublicmedia.com/lectures/461

[kwhilden]

This is great stuff. Thanks for posting it!

I love the physics approach to explaining problems. The ideas seems so simple, you think, 'of course' the entire time. But then you realize that you hadn't thought of it before, and that you learned something profound. Albert Bartlett's talk is one of those... I saw it many years ago. Enjoyed it again. It's worth taking time to watch the video.

[Chan]

This is really interesting stuff and has me wondering about all of the related applications/analogies.  People's eyes tend to glaze over when they hear too much talk of numbers (especially around tax time), but he keeps it interesting.  I'm looking forward to reading more of his articles.  Any suggestions?  Thanks for the intro.  

[Lobes]

You're welcome. Glad you found it interesting. My rather dry introduction in the Original Post probably doesn't do justice to how fascinating this talk actually is LoL.

Professor Bartlett has his own website where you can find more of his presentations, articles and books.

http://www.albartlett.org/

If you are interested in that sort of field I can recommend a couple of other books;

Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/

The Last Oil Shock by David Strahan  http://www.davidstrahan.com/

Also I find the work of British Journalist George Monbiot to be quite enlightening. He has written several books but I find his blog at the Guardian to be very informative and full of straight talking.

http://www.monbiot.com/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot


There are also many, many websites that look at the issue of over-consumption and peak resources. They range from the academically dense to the downright wacky. But a good place to start is at http://www.theoildrum.com/

[Lobes]

Heres a short extract from Professor Bartletts presentation:

Legend has it that the game of chess was invented by a mathematician who worked for a king. The king was very pleased. He said, “I want to reward you.” The mathematician said “My needs are modest. Please take my new chess board and on the first square, place one grain of wheat. On the next square, double the one to make two. On the next square, double the two to make four. Just keep doubling till you've doubled for every square, that will be an adequate payment.” We can guess the king thought, “This foolish man. I was ready to give him a real reward; all he asked for was just a few grains of wheat.”

But let's see what is involved in this. We know there are eight grains on the fourth square. I can get this number, eight, by multiplying three twos together. It's 2x2x2, it's one 2 less than the number of the square. Now that continues in each case. So on the last square, I’d find the number of grains by multiplying 63 twos together.

Now let’s look at the way the totals build up. When we add one grain on the first square, the total on the board is one. We add two grains, that makes a total of three. We put on four grains, now the total is seven. Seven is a grain less than eight, it's a grain less than three twos multiplied together. Fifteen is a grain less than four twos multiplied together. That continues in each case, so when we’re done, the total number of grains will be one grain less than the number I get multiplying 64 twos together. My question is, how much wheat is that?

You know, would that be a nice pile here in the room? Would it fill the building? Would it cover the county to a depth of two meters? How much wheat are we talking about?

The answer is, it's roughly 400 times the 1990 worldwide harvest of wheat. That could be more wheat than humans have harvested in the entire history of the earth. You say, “How did you get such a big number?” and the answer is, it was simple. We just started with one grain, but we let the number grow steadily till it had doubled a mere 63 times. 

[log man]

Thanks Lobes , very interesting.