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The brutal end of the growth paradigmWhat if you started a colony of bacteria inside a bottle at 11 o’ clock and it doubled every minute? Assume that at 12 o’ clock the bottle was full, meaning that the bacteria population has reached the point where the environment inside the bottle can sustain no more of them. Now, at what time before that happened was the bottle half full? The answer to this question is that it was half full one minute to twelve. That is what doubling every minute means. If the bacteria could think, when do you think they would start to realize that something was wrong, that they were running out of space, and rapidly so? These and many other very disturbing questions are asked by Dr. Albert Bartlett, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Physics, University of Boulder Colorado in this lecture named “Arithmetic, Population, and Energy” that you can find in these 8 video clips. Because bacteria are not the only organisms that have to deal with the effects of exponential growth. Many human phenomena also follow this growth pattern, like population growth, migration, economic growth, consumption of consumer goods and energy etc. etc. Might it also be so, that we find ourselves at the time “a couple of minutes to twelve?” Now, a lecture with an old professor in front of a group of students is usually not something you would think about as terrifying. And sure it lacks the extremely graphic images of a war or a terrorist attack, but if you listen carefully and understand what he is saying, you will probably find this video more terrifying than just about anything. The video does not only show that the human race is in bigger trouble than most people think. It also shows the mathematical fundamentals behind why we will not discover the problems until very shortly before we run into them. By the way, you don’t need to possess university level skills in mathematics to follow this lecture.
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Further reading:
13 comments to The brutal end of the growth paradigm |
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This video is informative indeed. It should be seen by millions!
@Christen Krogvig
Yes, at least almost a million viewers have seen the first of these 8 clips so far on YouTube, where we have embedded it from. The counter on YouTube is showing 952,886 views at the time of writing. But it should be seen by many, many more.
You could say that the number of people to see it ought to grow exponentially
When it comes to “consumption” of this video, lets hope it will reach billions.
Our readers can help spreading this highly important video. Send an email with a link to this page to all your contacts and ask them to pass it on.
You can also share the link on many different social media. If you look a little below the last of the video clips there are many icons for social media where you can share the link.
Not only does this video show that the human race is in far bigger trouble than most people think. It also shows the mathematical fundamentals behind why we will not discover the problems until shortly before running into them, big time.
@Christen Krogvig
Green Life Innovators would like to thank you for donating Norwegian Kroner 1000 to be used for Google ad campaigns, to make this page with this important video known to a larger audience.
The person who wrote the piece wasn’t thinking too clearly either.
If the number of bacteria doubles every minute for an hour, then the number at the end of the hour is 2^60, or roughly 10^18, times as many as the number at the beginning. Suppose each bacterium is shaped as a cube, one micrometre on each side. (That’s smaller than most bacteria.) Its volume is 10^-18 cubic metres. Suppose there was just one bacterium in the bottle at the beginning. At the end of the hour, the total volume of bacteria is one cubic metre. They wouldn’t fit into a normal bottle.
After another hour, the bacteria would fill a cube 1000 km on each side. After a third hour, they’d fill a cube three times larger than the earth’s orbit around the sun
Exponential growth is scary.
@David Williams
It does not invalidate the point of professor Bartlett what you write, it just makes it stronger, I believe
Yes. My observation does not invalidate Prof Bartlett’s point. It just shows that the idea of having bacteria double in numbers every minute for an hour inside a bottle is unrealistic.
As I’m sure you know, the sum of the infinite series 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 …. is finite, and equals 2. So the sum of the entire series is just twice the first term. If you look at the series in the reverse order, it represents exponential growth, and the sum is twice the final term. The number of humans on the earth is doubling in less than a human lifetime. If this has been true for the entire history of the species, then the total number of humans who have ever lived is less than twice the number who are alive today.
Later…
David
@David Williams
I sometimes use this fact as a background for a joke about statistics abuse. Saying that the probability of dying is 50%, since of all the people who live and ever have lived we have observed 50% of them to have died and 50% of them not to
very useful and informative in this and future critical times. how can i have a copy of dvd so I can use in my profession as environmental planner. thanks
nick tabungar
@Nestor “Nick” V. Tabungar, Jr.
As you can see, we have embedded these 8 video clips from YouTube. We do not have a copy of it on DVD. For a DVD of the lecture, I suggest you contact the University of Colorado, Boulder, where this lecture has been recorded, and ask them if they have one
Generally I like your blog a lot, but I’m not so impressed by this video (the math must be interesting for those who don’t grasp exponential growth, but I dissagree with many of the political concusions he draws and his predictions) and here is why:
First of all, let’s look at population growth. It has grown exponentially in the past, but that doesn’t mean that it will keep on doing so. We see that woman in developed countries in have a lot fewer children than they used to, so few that the population barely grows at all – and had been sinking in some places if it wasn’t for immigration, and this is expected to happen in the rest of the world sooner or later as well. The UN estimates guesses that the world population will stabilize at 9-10 billion. We certaintly won’t see continued exponential growth (unless society changes drasticly by humanity colonizing the universe, living a lot more space-efficiently by using viritual reality, or something like that).
But that’s not my main problem with his pessimism. He forgets that technology also grows exponentially! It grows more exponentially then consumption and population growth. Actually, both if we look at the statistics and expect technology to grow at the same exponential rate and if we look at what’s reasonable to expect with the emergence of nanotechnology, the advancement of computers, the re-engineering of the human brain functions, etc., we have reason to be extremely optimistic on behalf of humanity. I will write more about why I think this on my own blog in the future. (In the meantime I recommend this short presentation: http://howisearth.wordpress.com/2010/02/14/ray-kurzweil-on-how-technology-will-transform-us/ and this video: howisearth.wordpre…2/21/did-you-know/.)
Nanotechnology has the potential to help us make a lot of “stuff” that’s not resources today into resources, recycle everything we want, and be a lot mor efficient than we are today.
What we can do with computers and our understanding of the human brain are both growing exponentially (doubeling quite often), and it’s a question of time before we can make machines that are smarter than humans (and the arteficial inteligence we are able to make will keep on increasing exponentially also after that), which will speed up our scientific progress a lot.
I don’t think there is any doubt that we will be able to live confortabely on other planets and in space well within the end of the century.
There is no reason to worry about getting enough energy to cover our needs in the future. Even if we ignore what we will be able to do with next-generation nuclear power the energy from the sun will provide more than enough energy. This I have already written a post about which I think you will find very interesting: howisearth.wordpre…gy-renewable-energy/.
As mentioned, I will write posts in the future on my blog on why I’m so optimistic about the growth of technology, and what it will enable us to do.
By the way, I also think this post will be of interest: howisearth.wordpre…ing-climate-change/.
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