The Oil Drum

I agree, BrianT. Most of the economists today are infinite growth junkies, which is why I call them court astrologers. The number of economists who are practicing science, as defined by the scientific method (observe, hypothesize, test hypothesis, collect data, repeat) is amazingly small. Thankfully some of them are trying to develop a real science of scarcity, supply, demand, etc., but most of them are worthless priests bowing at the altar of growth.

Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett

"They are not stupid"

Is that correct? Come on, our situation is quite dunce-induced! But the idiocy has to work at a systems level, it has to take over institutions and ingrain itself in the culture. It works on the "cultivation of its own ignorance"--stupidity! Sorry, I just beg to differ.

It takes decades of centuries for this to happen. Particularly, in a highly developed, industrial superpower like the US. And I don't mean to be partisan at all. The culture, academia and the society as as a whole has to have a power base and ideology to make these decisions, they didn't consider massive downfalls--just like the engineers that built the WTC towers didn't test newer, theoretical impacts limits of giant kerosene filled jet-liners into their "modern masterpieces". Our societal model, to be vulgarly blunt, is like a giant Trade Center--not simply because of the threat of blow back terrorism arising from anywhere... Whether it be foreign policy or our own demented culture producing ream after ream of Mcveighs, Unabombers, school psychos, or the myriad of other less fatal mental disorders, too lengthy to go into here. Did Ford forsee PO when he was making 'lil Model T's on his invented assembly lines? Hell no! John D. Rockefeller was a power hungry, money-grubbing industrialist--"taking care of his baby". The Ultimate Cornucopian, his kid will have everything! Indeed, judging from Lee Raymond, The Oracle of Economists are indeed right in their prognostication that all is fine and delightful! *Pssssst* Let me tell you all a secret.... Economists also secretly whisper under their breaths, their medieval intellects fully intact, to his now long since dead brain's neurons' dream that money will continue, growth does that same, just like the oil, forever into posterity! John D grins in his sleep. Market innovation is evangelical in its saving power of PO. Find me a cornucopian geologist and I will show you a corporate apologist economist.

Traditional economists use a different
framework to analyze the resource price question than the one used in Limits to Growth, using aggregate demand/supply and ISLM money supply curves, etc. These contrast to the model used in Limits to Growth, which uses resource depletion and technological advances and population growth. So no wonder they don't agree -- different variables and weightings, based on different theories.

I don't think the validity of the Limits to Growth approach was attacked, but rather the conclusions -- but based on only one (most pessimistic) scenario. I don't have a copy of Limits to Growth in front of me, but I remember that they a number of scenarios. One scenario even considered "limitless technological growth."