> Exactly I'm having a hard time getting past the assumption in the article that energy use is tied directly to GDP per capita and that by not following the 7% growth of the Henry Adams Curve
Yes, this was a central simplifying fallacy in the article for me too.
Plenty of phenomena follow a logistic curve [1] — which starts out exponential but then flattens out when it reaches constraints or fills a niche or fully satisfies a need or something.
The initial exponential growth may have been a period where economic productivity was constrained in a major by energy availability. We still have some energy constraints, but they seem to be secondary — and in many areas energy requirements have fallen, as others have pointed out in this discussion. It's too complicated to simply flatten, but modern energy use does seem to broadly resemble a logistic curve.
Yes, this was a central simplifying fallacy in the article for me too.
Plenty of phenomena follow a logistic curve [1] — which starts out exponential but then flattens out when it reaches constraints or fills a niche or fully satisfies a need or something.
The initial exponential growth may have been a period where economic productivity was constrained in a major by energy availability. We still have some energy constraints, but they seem to be secondary — and in many areas energy requirements have fallen, as others have pointed out in this discussion. It's too complicated to simply flatten, but modern energy use does seem to broadly resemble a logistic curve.
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function