[LINK] Exponential growth [was Microsoft is dead ... were it so!]

[jim birch]

On 13/04/07, Alan L Tyree <alan at austlii.edu.au> wrote:
>
> Precisely. When faced with a very difficult problem, humans used their
> strongest resource: intelligence, science, technology, 'engineering' in
> the very broadest sense. They prevented what Erlich said could not be
> prevented.


Then again, this oft-quoted example of the failure of predicted disasters to
eventuate should be weighed up against predicted disasters that were just
allowed to occur, eg, Iraq, New Orleans.  And, of course, there's
unpredicted disasters.  It's a mixed bag.  One of the main ways people cope
with predicted negatives is doing very little and regarding it as
more-or-less normal when it happens, eg urban air quality.  Sure the
predictions can't really take the potential for creative human solutions
into account, but neither is it circumspect to assume future technology must
be able handle it.  It might, and it mightn't.

A key distinguishing feature of the green revolution was that it was an
unusual all round win-win-win situation.  Plant scientists like creating
better plants, agencies loved pumping it along, farmers wanted better
yeilds, and hungry mouths ate it up happily.  Everyone else could feel good
about it.  And no one was being too proprietary about it back in those
days.  In comparison, handling global warming is likely to have significant
costs and is meeting real resistance.  Maybe someone will invent a CO2
gobbler that produces a new cheap building material and clean electricity,
maybe not.

Jim