Are humans smarter than yeast?

This little clip does a good job at expressing why the climate change ‘alarmists’ may be some of the most sensible people out there.

Understanding exponential growth as a fundamental driver of global warming, environmental destruction, peak oil and natural gas, water and arable land shortages, social decay, resource wars, etc..

I am looking for people to help me translate this video into other languages.

Commentarians…If you think understanding exponential growth is important, and that this video clip is helpful, I hope you will consider including a link to this clip in your signature line in your commentary on other blogs — as appropriate.

3 Responses to “Are humans smarter than yeast?”

Feed for this Entry Trackback Address

1 Mobius May 28th, 2007 at 2:42 pm

The creator of this video seems to know his stuff, but in fact, he does NOT. There are no lillies which have the properties he mentions. The extrapolation of doublings is ALWAYS flawed. It does not exist in nature - AND IT CAN NOT. Understand that most clearly; bacteria DO NOT work that way. Nor does pollution. Nor does ANYTHING. Limited resources keeps even the most virulent bacteria in check, and they are NOT capable of doubling unless masses of food is shipped in, masses of shit is shipped out, and the bacteria are somehow transported to help the growth. Bacteria in and of themselves can NOT move more than a few millimetres and yet he is suggesting that they could overtake the world\’s oceans in only a few days, even if they covered less than 1% right now. That is patently absurd: bacteria can not move to get there in that time - regardless of their biotic potential.

There are clear physical limits, and making silly mathematical extrapolations based on simple doublings is a sure fire way to alarm people (without cause) and create fear (that may be the reason the the doublings are so abused - because you can\’t control a population without fear).

I appreciate what the author is trying to do - but he is using flawed assumptions, gross generalisations and ignores the physical realities of the systems he purports to describe.

Inaccurate! Buried!
2 photog May 28th, 2007 at 10:53 pm

That is scary when you think we are really only noticing climate change now. How many doublings are left till it is too late? Not many I\’d suggest.
3 Akonitum Jun 2nd, 2008 at 5:52 pm

@Mobius
You just amplify the point he\’s making. Continued exponential growth is impossible. Watch the video again.