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Disaster ahead
Posted: 14 Jun 2011, 11:51
by tymeric
http://www.businessinsider.com/jeremy-g ... ces-2011-6
Legendary investor Jeremy Grantham of GMO has published a treatise on the root cause of exploding commodity prices.
He has also offered a startlingly depressing outlook for the future of humanity.
Grantham concludes that the world has undergone a permanent "paradigm shift" in which the number of people on planet Earth has finally and permanently outstripped the planet's ability to support us.
Specifically, Grantham says, the phenomenon of ever-more humans using a finite supply of natural resources cannot continue forever--and the prices of metals, hydrocarbons (oil), and food are now beginning to reflect that.
In other words, Grantham says, it is different this time.
Re: Disaster ahead
Posted: 14 Jun 2011, 12:45
by UndercoverElephant
tymeric wrote:http://www.businessinsider.com/jeremy-g ... ces-2011-6
Legendary investor Jeremy Grantham of GMO has published a treatise on the root cause of exploding commodity prices.
He has also offered a startlingly depressing outlook for the future of humanity.
Grantham concludes that the world has undergone a permanent "paradigm shift" in which the number of people on planet Earth has finally and permanently outstripped the planet's ability to support us.
Specifically, Grantham says, the phenomenon of ever-more humans using a finite supply of natural resources cannot continue forever--and the prices of metals, hydrocarbons (oil), and food are now beginning to reflect that.
In other words, Grantham says, it is different this time.
Or....
Malthus was right after all....
It never ceases to amaze me what a large proportion of the population believes that Malthus has already been proven (by history) to be wrong. He thoroughly failed to anticipate the relevance of fossil fuels, but that doesn't change his overall hypothesis - sooner or later the population will expand to way beyond the sustainable level of food supply, followed by a die-off. He was wrong about the timing, and wrong about the scale of the boom, but he wasn't wrong about
what goes up must eventually come down.
Posted: 14 Jun 2011, 13:15
by 2 As and a B
Deleted
Posted: 14 Jun 2011, 15:46
by ziggy12345
If you slam into a wall really, really slowly, it doesnt hurt
Posted: 14 Jun 2011, 16:31
by Blue Peter
ziggy12345 wrote:If you slam into a wall really, really slowly, it doesnt hurt
Can you
slam into anything really, really slowly?
Peter.
Posted: 14 Jun 2011, 17:28
by Lord Beria3
http://www.gmo.com/websitecontent/JGLetterALL_1Q11.pdf
Here is the link to the treatise - a very good report into the long-term future of resources.
Posted: 14 Jun 2011, 17:33
by UndercoverElephant
Blue Peter wrote:ziggy12345 wrote:If you slam into a wall really, really slowly, it doesnt hurt
Can you
slam into anything really, really slowly?
Peter.
Eventually, the Andromeda galaxy will slam into our Milky Way....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJRc37D2ZZY
....sort of.
Posted: 14 Jun 2011, 19:40
by ziggy12345
Lots of things traveling close to the speed of light. It might take a long time but things are moving really really fast!
Re: Disaster ahead
Posted: 15 Jun 2011, 10:57
by caspian
UndercoverElephant wrote:It never ceases to amaze me what a large proportion of the population believes that Malthus has already been proven (by history) to be wrong. He thoroughly failed to anticipate the relevance of fossil fuels, but that doesn't change his overall hypothesis
Indeed. The Malthus-haters are probably the same people who rubbish the Club of Rome/Limits to Growth.