What Malthus failed to see is that in his time, 1 cow required two acres. That was the future then and forever for Malthus. He used a simple "static model" to predict the future. The same thing happened with Hardin. In the 1960's, we were warned by the climate "scientists" the earth was going into another ice age. Later in 1980's or 1990's we were going into a global warming period. Later still, it was climate change when, for 18 years or so, the CO2 was increasing, and temperatures were not. Today, in 2022, it's back to global warming.
Paul Ehrlich's "The Population Bomb"(1968) was Malthus reborn or neo-Malthusian. Ehrlich's predictions all failed, yet he remains a respected Professor and to this day defends his theses.
In predicting the future, models are used (weather, economics, stock market, climate, insurance, ...). In most cases that I know of, the models are static - they don't compute something and then feed the computed results into the next calculation - they don't model the feedback. Static models predict for a specific point in time. Dynamic models state with time T1 and compute all all the results for the time between T1 and T2. The few models I have seen that are dynamic have a flood of "parameters" that adjust the results. None of the parameters can be explained.
=======QUOTE=============
... I asked Fermi whether he was not impressed by the agreement between
our calculated numbers and his measured numbers. He replied, “How
many arbitrary parameters did you use for your calculations?” I thought
for a moment about our cut-off procedures and said, “Four.” He said,
“I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four
parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle
his trunk.”
Freeman Dyson on describing the predictions of his model for mesonproton scattering to Enrico Fermi in 1953 [Dys04].
=======UNQUOTE===========
In Chaos theory, there is a statement/question that goes something like this:
If a butterfly flaps its wings in Hong Kong, does it cause the Hurricane in Miami?
To me, climate science is telling me it has solved the Chaos problem. Pardon me if I am skeptical.
An example of a static model is the predicted new revenue from raising or lowering taxes. The CBO does this all the time. (Malthus used a static model.) I don't recall any CBO predictions coming true. Human reactions to new laws and policies concerning climate, stock market, insurance, economics, and tax rate changes are unknown and horribly difficult to model.
Malthus overlooked <bold>feeding grain to cattle</bold>. In Malthus day, one acre fed 0.5 steer. The number of grain-fed steers one acre (a football field is roughly one acre) can support is 200 or more - a 400x improvement over pasture. The climate people overlook clouds (there is no credible model for clouds because they are so local in nature and modeling the world's atmosphere at the 100 cubic meter level would require exabytes of memory (10**18 or 1 million Terabytes), zettabytes of storage (10**21 or 1024 exabytes), and lots of processors (many more than any one system has today). Climate models overlook sun cycles. Climate scientists have changed/corrected/adjusted historical temperature recordings and destroyed some of the original data.
In all "tragedy of the commons" discussions I have read, the problem statement bounds the solutions to disaster. Malthus might better have challenged the public to solve the 0.5 cow/acre problem than predict doom and gloom, in my opinion. He overlooked the ingenuity and creativity of the human mind. "Improvise, adapt, and overcome".
Thanks for the comment, Ed. It's true that one approach to the question of climate change is to say it's not really a problem and that nothing need be done about it. Or that more clever people in the future will figure out an answer that will spare us from having to do anything in the present. It's also true that no forecast is perfectly reliable. That said, people act on incomplete information all the time. We buy insurance policies to protect us against events we hope will never happen, and that in fact are unlikely to happen. Most people don't get in car wrecks in a given year, and most houses don't burn down in their owners' lifetimes. Many people carry umbrellas even when the chances of rain are only 50/50. Perhaps it's worth pointing out that many people are REQUIRED to buy insurance even if they don't want to. Drivers are required to buy liability insurance by the state. Most homeowners are compelled by the holders of their mortgages to buy fire insurance. Government action on climate change would be akin to a required insurance policy. Philosophically it's defensible to say that such requirements are intrusive and shouldn't exist. Libertarian skeptics of climate change might say that believers in climate change are free to take the bus, but shouldn't compel others to do so. Again, that's a defensible position. But that raises the free-rider problem. Pacifists have to pay their taxes, including the portion that funds the army, lest they get their national security for free. These are all complicated and interesting questions. Thanks for raising them, Ed.
H. W. Brands
https://hwbrands.substack.com/p/the-tragedy-of-the-commons?s=r
Another excellent post, Professor Brands,
You asked for comments, here is mine.
What Malthus failed to see is that in his time, 1 cow required two acres. That was the future then and forever for Malthus. He used a simple "static model" to predict the future. The same thing happened with Hardin. In the 1960's, we were warned by the climate "scientists" the earth was going into another ice age. Later in 1980's or 1990's we were going into a global warming period. Later still, it was climate change when, for 18 years or so, the CO2 was increasing, and temperatures were not. Today, in 2022, it's back to global warming.
Paul Ehrlich's "The Population Bomb"(1968) was Malthus reborn or neo-Malthusian. Ehrlich's predictions all failed, yet he remains a respected Professor and to this day defends his theses.
In predicting the future, models are used (weather, economics, stock market, climate, insurance, ...). In most cases that I know of, the models are static - they don't compute something and then feed the computed results into the next calculation - they don't model the feedback. Static models predict for a specific point in time. Dynamic models state with time T1 and compute all all the results for the time between T1 and T2. The few models I have seen that are dynamic have a flood of "parameters" that adjust the results. None of the parameters can be explained.
=======QUOTE=============
... I asked Fermi whether he was not impressed by the agreement between
our calculated numbers and his measured numbers. He replied, “How
many arbitrary parameters did you use for your calculations?” I thought
for a moment about our cut-off procedures and said, “Four.” He said,
“I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four
parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle
his trunk.”
Freeman Dyson on describing the predictions of his model for mesonproton scattering to Enrico Fermi in 1953 [Dys04].
=======UNQUOTE===========
In Chaos theory, there is a statement/question that goes something like this:
If a butterfly flaps its wings in Hong Kong, does it cause the Hurricane in Miami?
To me, climate science is telling me it has solved the Chaos problem. Pardon me if I am skeptical.
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/study-confirms-climate-models-are-getting-future-warming-projections-right/
An example of a static model is the predicted new revenue from raising or lowering taxes. The CBO does this all the time. (Malthus used a static model.) I don't recall any CBO predictions coming true. Human reactions to new laws and policies concerning climate, stock market, insurance, economics, and tax rate changes are unknown and horribly difficult to model.
Malthus overlooked <bold>feeding grain to cattle</bold>. In Malthus day, one acre fed 0.5 steer. The number of grain-fed steers one acre (a football field is roughly one acre) can support is 200 or more - a 400x improvement over pasture. The climate people overlook clouds (there is no credible model for clouds because they are so local in nature and modeling the world's atmosphere at the 100 cubic meter level would require exabytes of memory (10**18 or 1 million Terabytes), zettabytes of storage (10**21 or 1024 exabytes), and lots of processors (many more than any one system has today). Climate models overlook sun cycles. Climate scientists have changed/corrected/adjusted historical temperature recordings and destroyed some of the original data.
In all "tragedy of the commons" discussions I have read, the problem statement bounds the solutions to disaster. Malthus might better have challenged the public to solve the 0.5 cow/acre problem than predict doom and gloom, in my opinion. He overlooked the ingenuity and creativity of the human mind. "Improvise, adapt, and overcome".
Predicting the future is hard.
Ed Bradford
egb@utexas.edu
Pflugerville,TX
Thanks for the comment, Ed. It's true that one approach to the question of climate change is to say it's not really a problem and that nothing need be done about it. Or that more clever people in the future will figure out an answer that will spare us from having to do anything in the present. It's also true that no forecast is perfectly reliable. That said, people act on incomplete information all the time. We buy insurance policies to protect us against events we hope will never happen, and that in fact are unlikely to happen. Most people don't get in car wrecks in a given year, and most houses don't burn down in their owners' lifetimes. Many people carry umbrellas even when the chances of rain are only 50/50. Perhaps it's worth pointing out that many people are REQUIRED to buy insurance even if they don't want to. Drivers are required to buy liability insurance by the state. Most homeowners are compelled by the holders of their mortgages to buy fire insurance. Government action on climate change would be akin to a required insurance policy. Philosophically it's defensible to say that such requirements are intrusive and shouldn't exist. Libertarian skeptics of climate change might say that believers in climate change are free to take the bus, but shouldn't compel others to do so. Again, that's a defensible position. But that raises the free-rider problem. Pacifists have to pay their taxes, including the portion that funds the army, lest they get their national security for free. These are all complicated and interesting questions. Thanks for raising them, Ed.