Re: [asa] A Sustainable Future and Exponential growth

Dave W. said: Remember that in this thread I am not postulating that we are
at that limit now, you get to choose how many more doublings can be
sustained.

I respond: First, I don't accept the assumption the population will
continue to grow at the same rate. If and as economic and political
conditions improve around the world, population growth is likely to slow and
then to decline. We don't need governments to enforce this; it will happen
as a natural consequence of prosperity. See "World Population in 2300,"
Proceedings on the United Nations Expert Meeting on World Population in
2300, available at
http://157.150.195.10/esa/population/publications/longrange2/2004worldpop2300reportfinalc.pdf

Second, given a reasonable rate of population growth in the foreseeable
future, I don't think the problem is one of the amount of available
resources; it's primarily a problem of distribution. For example, right
now, "[w]orld agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today
than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase. This is
enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories
(kcal) per person per day. . . The principal problem is that many people in
the world do not have sufficient land to grow, or income to purchase, enough
food." World Hunger Education Service, World Hunger Facts 2008, available
at
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm

On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 1:33 PM, Dave Wallace <wmdavid.wallace@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Randy Isaac wrote:
>
>> Dave Wallace wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> A few years back computer speed doubled roughly every 18 months. I
>>> suspect that Intel and AMD strongly wish they could still continue with that
>>> pattern. Sure they still double transistor gates every couple of years or
>>> so, but heat problems seem to have killed the raw speed doubling or at least
>>> have halted it for now.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Interestingly, performance is increasing at 82% a year (faster than a
>> doubling every 18 months) and shows no sign of slowing down. (Full
>> disclosure: I am not objective but am strongly biased in two ways: 1. vested
>> interest in the winner of the last 7 rankings--my baby called Blue Gene; 2.
>> having published claims that Moore's Law has slowed down:
>>
>> I tried not to go too deeply into some of the nuances, thats why I said
> the number of gates is still increasing. This increase results in things
> like multi core processors and the ability to interconnect many processor
> chips to create things like Blue Gene. However, the regular increase in
> raw single core performance that used to entice people to upgrade their PCs
> every few years seems at least for now to have stopped or severly slowed
> down. A 2 core processor provides some apparent performance improvement but
> 4 core seems pretty marginal unless one is running something like SETI@home. Maybe some future version of Windows, MacOS... will figure out how to
> effectively use the extra resources. I agree Blue Gene is a major
> breakthrough. Maybe the compiler people will figure out how to
> automatically create multi threading code that can utilize the multiple
> cores.
> And David O
>
> I'm getting old and cranky though, so I don't think the Lord will tarry a
>> billion years.
>>
> Me neither but after all he has allowed the show to go on for roughly 13
> billion years to date.
>
> What I can't agree with, however, is the notion that human over-population
>> is the fundamental driver of these problems
>>
> I fail to understand how you justify this given limits on the amount of
> food, water, air... that the biosphere can produce and the amount of waste
> that it can absorb. Remember that in this thread I am not postulating that
> we are at that limit now, you get to choose how many more doublings can be
> sustained. It seems to me that we are getting close to fulfilling the
> imperative to fill the earth.
>
> Dave W (ASA member)
>
>
> To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
> "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
>

-- 
David W. Opderbeck
Associate Professor of Law
Seton Hall University Law School
Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology
To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.