Trends
sastyk | March 20, 2012Richard Heinberg has a nice piece about drawing conclusions from present trends. Among his observations:
If current economic trends continue . . .
China's economy will be 8 times as big as it is today by 2040.
China's economy will surpass the size of the present global economy before 2050.
The US federal debt will double--from $14 trillion to $28 trillion--by 2022.
In 2072, the federal debt will amount to $896 trillion, or $1,629,091 for each American (assuming a US population then of 550 million).
By the end of the century, each American will "owe" over a billion dollars.
Thanks to the…
stoat | July 16, 2011Eduardo has quite a nice post at KZ. I say "quite nice" because it is definitely one for those deeply emeshed in the debate and familiar with it, yet not wanting to be part of the rancour.
Point 1 should be required reading for all the septic folk out there:
The main question here that any scientist would like to answer is what are the factors or combination of factors that have caused this warming. Note that even if temperatures had been much higher in , say 1800, even much higher than today -which I doubt - this question would remain. We see a change and we have to find an explanation for…
razib | December 6, 2009At my other weblog I looked at some of the data on the international data on religion. There are two positions in regards to religious trends which always crop up.
* That in the medium-to-long term religion, in particular supernatural religion, will disappear.
* That in the short-to-medium term we are in the midst of a "religious revival."
The first position has been held more or less by some intellectuals since the Enlightenment. The second position is something that I'm familiar with contemporaneously. The reality is that the world is not going through a revival in religiosity if by…