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www.space.com...
A soon-to-be published research paper, 'Human and Nature Dynamics (HANDY): Modeling Inequality and Use of Resources in the Collapse or Sustainability of Societies' by University of Maryland researchers Safa Motesharrei and Eugenia Kalnay, and University of Minnesota's Jorge Rivas, was not solicited, directed or reviewed by NASA.
It is an independent study by the university researchers utilizing research tools developed for a separate NASA activity. As is the case with all independent research, the views and conclusions in the paper are those of the authors alone. NASA does not endorse the paper or its conclusions."
Are reason and logic returning to our discussion of the Earth, environment and adaptation?
The balance of nature
The model they arrived at takes inspiration from the classic notion of predator vs. prey, sometimes referred to as the "balance of nature." When a deer population grows, for instance, the wolves that feed on those deer reproduce more successfully, too, and so the wolf population grows.
Everything is fine until the wolves become too numerous and overreach, eating so many deer that there isn't enough venison to go around. Then, as the number of deer plunges, the wolf population drops due to famine, until equilibrium is reestablished and the cycle begins anew.
"The scenarios most closely reflecting the reality of our world today are found in the third group of experiments, where we introduced economic stratification," the researchers wrote, referring to uneven wealth distribution. "Under such conditions, we find that collapse is difficult to avoid."
Not all is lost, however: Societies can moderate the two factors that contribute most to social meltdown: the exploitation of natural resources and the uneven distribution of wealth, the researchers said.
"Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per-capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion," they wrote.
Aqualung2012
reply to post by jdub297
But they did fund it
A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution. source www.theguardian.com...
This story has legs, as they say.