Special qualifications regarding the five illustration variables: resources, population, food, industrial output, and pollution. in the above illustration

1. Resources: This curve represents the amount of available "nonrenewable" resources for the entire earth. This variable sets a hard limit to human survival. Examples of the critical resources used in the study are arable land, freshwater, metals, forests, and oceans. The main impact of this variable in the model is that, as such resources are used up, they cost more to obtain or run out entirely. The main result is the higher cost forces reduced industrial output because people can't afford to purchase as many items. The other variable that is directly impacted is food production. When an essential mineral like potassium (potash) approaches depletion, fertilizer costs become very high. That means farms fail. Rising food costs for individuals and governments are no longer affordable. People then starve on a wide scale.
2. Population: This is the number of people on the planet. But it is a very complex variable to model for its effects on the other four variables. For example, how does a person living in a slum compare with a movie celebrity when calculating their impact on industrial production? When these graphs were first produced, the "average" American was responsible for the consumption of $11,000 in "Gross National Product." Yet, in the same year, a person in China only used $100 equivalent! A person in Nigeria only used $60! 
3. Because the effort produced the study with a long future in mind, the assumption was that world society would solve the great inequity injustices across the planet. They did this by designing a model that assumed ALL people on the earth would achieve a standard of living equivalent to what the "average American" anticipated to achieve in the year 2000. That was $36,800. While a good goal, in humanitarian terms, this additional "spendable income" would hugely impact industrial output. That output would have an equally large impact on the need for ALL natural resources. The result was the steep downturn in the resources curve after 2000 and the steep rise in industrial output around 1980.
4. Food: The variable for food production is mainly driven by the amount of "fertile" land on earth suitable to grow crops and grazing animals. That resource has long been taken. Most land has lost its natural fertility and is now dependent on technology - i.e., chemical fertilizers. Most educated people hearing this immediately think, "The green revolution. We'll just keep doing that." But "the green revolution" was a technology solution of the 1960s aimed at "temporarily" saving India from mass starvation. To be sustainable, however, a mass population stabilization program was also needed in India. But, it was never done. India is now facing the same problem it had in the 1950s. Ironically, China was also facing the same issue. They also implemented the same technologies. However, they also instituted the "one child per family" program, saving them temporarily from the disaster in India.
5. So all future food production relies on developing poor soils and finding new technologies to increase yields further. Unfortunately, no viable options are currently known. Furthermore, two additional key obstacles are also now entering the picture: available fresh water and loss of potash reserves.
6. In 2022, the "signature" major rivers in the world announced droughts sufficient to stop boat traffic. This included: the Colorado, Mississippi, Rhine, Danube, Volga, Yangtze, Tiber, Po, and Elbe. (If a dam is built in Ethiopia to provide water to that country, the Nile will be added to the list.) 
7. Potash is needed to make fertilizer. The primary world supply comes from Canada. It has about 1 billion tons accessible in its mines. It also ships about 70 million tons a year. That means they will run out in 14 years! After that, no viable options are known.
8. Many people will ask, what about the oceans? What about fish as food? This was included as a natural resource. Unfortunately, almost every fishery on earth is already in collapse or quickly approaching it. This is also why the food curve takes such a steep fall in the graph.
9. Industrial output: This is a measure of all the tangible goods produced around the world. While we usually think first about what people consume daily, that's only a small part. As the population grows, new infrastructure is needed: buildings, roads, and bridges, new factories. Materials and parts are needed to maintain and rebuild the infrastructure that has already been built or destroyed by natural catastrophes and war. The growth of population, rising standards of living, and the strife it causes put tremendous pressure on producing more of everything! That's why the industrial output curve has grown so quickly. It then stops growing and crashes because the natural resource runs out.
10. Pollution: The major concerns for pollution in the study were: world production of energy, chemical harm to people and the environment, and the costs to manage the pollution. The first impact in the model is direct population death. The second is indirect death when resources are consumed to control pollution. A third is diverting costs away from food production and industrial output. The energy problem is mainly from fossil fuels and burning wood and biomass.
11. Chemical harm for people impacts society when chemicals either directly kill people or require significant health care. The environmental impacts are an intermediate stage where animals and plants are harmed in ways that cause follow-on harm to humans. An example of a direct animal impact is the destruction of a fish species that becomes a food supply loss for humans. An indirect animal impact is the mercury contamination of fish, which causes severe brain harm in humans.
12. An example of costs to manage pollution is the problem of trash landfills. Trash production is now so great in developed countries that international shipping is used to turn developing countries into trash dumps.

4. The original Club of Rome/MIT study's significant conclusions and its collapse warning the global society.

Assuming you have read our foundational first article and the second article in our global collapse timeframe series (linked at the end of this article), let's overview the original Club of Rome/MIT collapse study conclusions before we modify the timeframes seen in the illustration above. 

1. "If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. [That is, by 2070]

2. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in population and industrial capacity."

When the original study is updated without the current climate change research, you will find the following:

1. By running the program over again using current data, any errors that entered the original calculation for the period from 1972 to 2022 would be eliminated. What has been very satisfying to those who have run reevaluations is that the curves have so closely held their shape.

2. While the general shape of the illustration curves above remains the same, when the program was run with starting data from around 2012, the crash times occurred much earlier! The crashes occur earlier because critical resource depletions are now estimated to occur much earlier.

3. In addition to gold and potash resource shortages mentioned earlier, depletions of many more critical minerals, natural products like trees, and direct food sources are expected in less than two decades.

4. Regarding the graph, that means the point on the graph labeled "2040 8.5B people" can be moved ahead to 2030.

5. The illustration point labeled "2100 2.5B people" left alive can be moved ahead to 2070 after a much steeper drop. The reason is easily seen from the examples given above for the depletion of gold and potash, but remember this, the above timeframe projections do not include the recent climate change research. (Most recent independent population projections not factoring in the many counter-population factors discussed in this article are as follows. The world's population was projected to reach 8 billion in November 2022. in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and 10.4 billion in 2100.)

More About how global food production will be affected:

When you add current climate change and resource factors into the Club of Rome/MIT-related studies, the original study predictions for food production stay much the same because the original study accurately anticipated the depletion of potassium (potash) and overuse of rivers and groundwaters.

Still, some minor differences make a drop in global food production occur a few years sooner and a bit more severe. 

Here is more about how global food production projections will change with current climate change research and resource predictions added to the older Club of Rome/MIT and elated studies projections:

1. Global food production (and food distribution) will begin to decline and collapse sometime from about 2025 to 2031 because of increased crop failures and low crop yields. In addition, food production and food distribution will be battered by climate change-driven extreme weather events like heatwaves, heat domes, droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, cyclones, tornados, floods and flooding, rain bombs, wind storms [Derechos], dust storms, wildfire smoke events, unseasonable cold spells, and other abnormal unseasonal weather.

Large-scale weather shifts driven by significant changes in the path of the jet streams will also cause lower food production. Jet stream instabilities will contribute to regional droughts, major rivers going dry, and regional floods. As a result of the above and as global heating accelerates, the past's stable, regular growing seasons will cease to exist in many locations worldwide.

2. Beginning sometime about 2025-2031, food production will drop radically because of a new series of key crossed climate change tipping points and feedback loops, which will again increase the severity, frequency, and scale of climate change-driven primary and secondary consequences.

3. Food production collapse is only partially due to yearly climate change. The cumulative negative effect on food production also shows in resource depletion, including aquifers and reservoirs and mountain glaciers hitting bottom, the critical depletion of potassium and potash, used in many chemical-based manufactured fertilizers, and the collapse of soils. 

Pollution also kills food production, contributing to the collapse of fisheries. Using pesticides and other pollution sources will destroy bee populations, and animal antibiotics will give way to drug-resistant animal diseases and lower food production. The rising temperatures of climate change will also affect the food supply through migrating crop diseases and insect infestations. 

4. From 2030 to 2050, global food production will continue to decline for many of the same reasons mentioned above. 

5. Global food production will not recover from its steep decline until somewhere between 50% to as much as 90% of the human population has died off (from about 2050-2080.) This steep decline in global food production by about 2030 or sooner is because we will have entered into irreversible runaway global heating with its many extinction-accelerating climate tipping points and deadly feedback loops. (But, if humanity can get close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, somewhere near 2050, the loss of human life after 2050 will be far less, and food production should level off and stabilize at a higher level.)

6. Global food production will eventually level or decline at a far lower rate, depending on how intensely humanity continues to die off after 2050. 

7. There is one ever-present mega-variable for all five collapse variables. If there is a global nuclear or biological war during the period of these projections, these predictions would, of course, significantly and suddenly change.

GLOBAL POPULATION

Quick Summary of Population Graph Updates:

1. By 2050, 50% of the human population will die. There will be only about 4 billion left.

2. The original illustration point (at the top of the page from the original study) included a note at the year 2100 labeled "2100 with 2.5B people." With all climate change and other updates, and assuming we do not get close to reaching the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, the graph now becomes about 1 to about 1 1/2 billion people left alive by 2070-2080. This change is quite a difference. (To see why climate change and other factors will not likely create our total extinction, click here.

3. But, assuming that we do get close to reaching the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, the population graph will remain somewhere between 2-3 billion people left (about 2.5 billion) by 2100.

More about how global population will be affected:

a. The global population reached 8 billion in November of 2022, considerably sooner than projected in earlier collapse studies. However, the global population will drop markedly faster when all current climate factors are added to the previous five related collapse studies. There will be significantly larger deaths than projected in the original Club of Rome/MIT study and its four related verification studies.

This larger population drop will result from three major causes. One is the many primary and secondary climate change-driven consequences that occur with increasing severity, frequency, and scale. The second is the "overshoot" of population size at each time point, consuming more food and resources and generating more pollution. The third is major social unrest from mass migrations, leading to worldwide conflict.

b. By about mid-century, about half of humanity will be dead no matter what we do now because:

i. our governments squandered the last 60 years when we should have gradually reduced our global fossil fuel use. (Because of this long-term government inaction, many severe climate change consequences are unavoidable.) 

ii. The many accelerating primary and secondary climate change-driven consequences will, directly and indirectly, lower the global population.

iii. by mid-century, we will have crossed into and beyond several climate change mass extinction accelerating tipping points.

iv. The fossil fuel atmospheric carbon pollution physics and extinction dilemma of Garret's Climate Dilemma, which at some point, our politicians will have to face and decide to save the other half of humanity post-min-century.

c. The original Club of Rome/MIT illustration and the KPMG illustration (above) need to be adjusted so that our new collapse timeframe shows only about 4 billion people left alive by 2050. (See the new illustration above.)

d. The original Club of Rome/MIT illustration (at the top of the page), labeled "2100 with 2.5B people" left alive, should now range from only about 1 to about 1 and 1/2 billion people left alive by 2070-2080. Not the 2.5 billion by 2100 from the original Club of Rome/MIT study.

e. Near-total extinction around 2070-2080 only occurs if our governments do not get global fossil fuel use reduced close to the legitimate 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. (If our governments do come close to the challenging 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, we may be able to save as much as half of humanity, about 4 billion people, by about 2050. But after 2050, even if we come close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, the human population will eventually continue to drop to about 2-3 billion people by about 2100 because of ongoing resource shortages, lowered food production, and reduced industrial output. )

f. The big thing to remember is that fewer people means less industrial output, which means less food. Fewer people, lower industrial output, and less food production mean less climate change-related fossil fuel-related pollution of our atmosphere. Once we significantly reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases, it will finally start reversing and lowering global temperatures, which will be a huge life and environment saver. All of which also means better conditions for the survival of any survivors post-mid-century.

GLOBAL INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT

Quick Summary of Industrial Output Graph Updates

Here is how industrial output projections will change when current climate change and resource depletion research is added to the previous projections:

1. Industrial output should peak by about 2035-2040.

2. Industrial output will drop steeper and earlier than in the original and subsequent Club of Rome/MIT-related studies from 2050 to about 2080.

2. Industrial output will then drop to match the population, food production, and resource depletion declines.

3. Industrial output should eventually level off at a far lower level commensurate with the population, providing that the world does not go into a new dark age. However, industrial output will drop even further if that happens and remain so for many decades, possibly a century or more.

More about how industrial output will be affected:

Here are additional climate and resource depletion-related reasons why industrial output will continue to fall as global temperatures continue to rise: 

a. Because of increased global warming work disruptions and many stresses caused by both the primary and secondary climate change-driven consequences, the total cumulative human capacity to work outside of protected enclosures will go down significantly. These climate-related stresses and damages will cause more business production and product distribution interruptions, business and personal uncertainty, unemployment, and homelessness. (Some climate-related disruptions will even affect production inside enclosures.) 

b. As we experience worsening primary and secondary climate change-driven consequences, there also will be more shortages of necessary raw and manufactured resources. These shortages occur because the mining, harvesting, or processing of these needed resources will also be delayed or slowed by the worsening of the primary and secondary climate change-driven consequences.

Because of these increasing climate-related resource depletion issues and work interruptions, the dependable production and distribution of food, medical supplies, and other essential supplies will continue to be significantly reduced or, in the later decades, break down entirely. 

c. As the climate change-driven economic, political, ecological, and social chaos spreads, it will trigger more regional, national, and international conflicts and conventional wars. Governments will eventually declare martial law as things deteriorate, and more hard-won human rights will be suspended. In this chaotic environment, injustices and inequities will rise exponentially, making working and industrial output even more difficult to sustain.  

d. After weaker governments and major communications channels break down, local warlords, tribes, clans, and criminal gangs will take control, and chaos will grow even greater, causing further reductions in industrial output.

e. After the widespread collapse and billions of people die, the deceased will leave vast quantities of property behind. Surviving refugees would move into existing, fully equipped homes if they weren't destroyed by war. Because of the lower population, the need for new infrastructures like roads and bridges would end.

The survivors, because of the depleted resources, will then be forced to supplement their needs with items recovered from what was left behind, landfills, or new services to keep old products and machines running as long as possible. This "survival-based" "recycling" will further reduce the need for industrial output. As global supply chains fail, people will fall back on personal "craft" hand-made work like making clothes. If survivors enter a new dark age, industrial output will fall even further.

GLOBAL RESOURCES

Quick Summary of Global Resources Graph Updates

1. The global resources curve will drop considerably more steeply from 2025 to 2050. 

2. After 2070-2080, global resources level off or decline only slightly until 2100.

3. Resource stabilization will only occur when far fewer people need far fewer resources.

Here is more about how global resource projections will change:

1. The resource lines on the original Club of Rome/MIT study illustration and the KPMG illustration above will look significantly different. This difference is because of a much faster climate change-driven drop-off in human population and industrial output than the original Club of Rome/MIT study and the four related studies predicted. 

2. Because of the higher population than was anticipated by the Club of Rome/MIT study since 1972, the new earlier resource depletion rate (shown above) is faster than the original study showed. Therefore, the new global resource line will drop steeply from 2030 to 2050 because the overpopulation reduction of resource usage takes longer.

3. Because it takes time to reduce the population overshoot, the resource depletion crash will stay severe longer and go deep. This resource crash will continue until the overall population gets back in line with the earth's ability to renew the resources sustainably. This will produce a more profound earlier resource loss than projected.

4. Because fewer resources will be used as more and more people die, resources will also last considerably longer than in the original Club of Rome/MIT and related studies. These will sustain the people who survive for a longer time.  

5. To help make the problem of the dwindling of key mineral resources on a wildly overpopulated planet crystal clear, it is only necessary to look at one resource, potassium. The most urgent food production-related resource depletion the world now faces is the loss of potassium. Potassium is primarily found in the mineral potash. Potash is the key critical ingredient in man-made fertilizers.

Accelerating climate change will radically change the world's rain, snow, and temperature patterns, and these factors will cause many of the world's farmers to move to other areas better suited for crop growing. The problem is that many safer global warming areas have significantly poorer soils that will need even more fertilizers to maintain the productivity of modern agribusiness.

To further clarify food production-related resource shortage issues, one only has to examine the "Green Revolution," which saved India from mass starvation in the late 1960s. This agricultural revolution was achieved by introducing "modern" mechanized farming. But it was done with a warning! This approach was ONLY temporary. It required fossil fuel-driven machinery, large farms, high-tech hybrid genetically engineered crops, and heavy fertilizer use. It would only support the starving population level for India at that time.

If the world population continued to grow, all the modern“Green Revolution” gains would be unsustainable. With our urgent need to radically cut global fossil fuel use, and the depletion of potash, the “Green Revolution” can NOT be repeated, especially in the poorer soils generally found in the northern global warming safer areas.

GLOBAL POLLUTION

Quick Summary of Global Pollution Graph Updates

1. The pollution line in our new projection looks very similar to the one in the original Club of Rome/MIT study and as projected in the KPMG illustrations above. The significant difference in that curve's growth rate is illustrated below. 

2. Global pollution goes "off the top of the chart" and stays there for centuries beyond the 2100 date.

3. As population and industrial output decline, the pollution production rate will decrease but not stop completely.

Why the pollution graph is the only graph that goes up and off the top of the graph

Please note that the pollution curve tracks the TOTAL pollution on the planet, NOT just that being generated by humans at each given time point. 

Since the climate tipping points are being triggered and crossed, even if humanity entirely stops putting carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere, the crossed climate tipping points will keep adding more atmospheric pollution like carbon dioxide and methane from melting permafrost. So the curve keeps going up! Unless humans find a way to extract pollution from the air, water, and land, its deadly effects will stay in our environment for decades to centuries.

The other reason pollution runs off the top of the graph is that the previous studies ran dozens of different models, each with different assumptions. They wanted to keep all the variables consistent across all the studies for comparison.

For many types of global pollution, there are two significant problems:

a. The first is that humanity now produces pollution at rates many times higher than the earth's natural ability to counteract that rate of production. This problem means the total amount of that pollutant will keep going up until the human population reaches a much lower point.

b. The second is so much pollution has already been created that it will take natural processes a very long time, hundreds of years in some cases, to reduce them down to acceptable levels.

An excellent example of this problem is the mercury contamination of the ocean. Mercury is considered by the World Health Organization (WHO) as one of the top ten chemicals or groups of chemicals of primary public health concern. 

The primary way the oceans store mercury is in life forms: fish, microbes, and plants. When we were told by the WHO to switch to eating more fish to avoid problems with land animal diets, they ran right into the high mercury levels in edible fish that caused extensive human illness: loss of peripheral vision, weakened muscles, impairment of hearing and speech, and deteriorated movement coordination, and that is just for starters.

The natural processes that eliminate mercury from the environment are so complex no estimates for natural removal are generally agreed to. What the studies do suggest, however, is that the time span for natural removal will be found to be many decades in soils and possibly centuries in the ocean. (See 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_pollution_in_the_ocean )

Here is how pollution projections can fall based on current climate change research

a. Fewer people will burn fewer fossil fuels, and there will be less air pollution.

b. Less industrial output, linked to a falling population, will produce less pollution.

d. The chemical pollution of our soils and waters will also fall directly proportional to the falling population, food production, resource extraction, and industrial output.

7. All three Club of Rome-related study graphs are shown together to help you view ALL studies' changes over the last 50+ years.

As you will see below, the population, resources, and food production factors collapse the fastest and earliest when you add in the recent climate change research.

The original Club of Rome/MIT study graph from the early 1970's:

The KPMG updated graph from (needs date):

The 2023 Job One for Humanity updated graph with current climate change information added and where humanity does not get close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets:

8. What does it mean if humanity does get close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets and we do not go into the second stage of irreversible runaway global heating?

While viewing the 2023 Job One for Humanity update graph just above, with the other two graphs just above, notice the changes to population, food production, etc. The changes are because we modified the graph variables to compensate for the added climate change factors and the world getting close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets close to 2025. 

When you factor in that the world does get close to reaching the 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets, here is a list of the significant changes: 

11. Summary and Conclusion

Here is a summary of the conclusions of the Job One for Humanity climate change think tank as of January 5th, 2023, for our new study after we added current climate change research and analysis to the results of the original 1970 Club of Rome/MIT study and its four related subsequent verification studies: 

1. Our new research and analysis again verify the legitimate work and further refines the prediction timeline of the original 1970 Club Of Rome/MIT study and its four related subsequent studies.

2, The new and expanded information above concerning the global collapse of food production, the population, industrial output, and available resources should help many individuals and organizations be aware of the extent and magnitude of the current global collapse threat and its timetable predictions. In addition, this article will allow these individuals or organizations to initiate or adjust their preparations and time frames more accurately.

3. A global collapse of key areas is no longer predicted not to occur until 2100 or in the far-off future, as many corporate-funded think tank models have predicted. All the above empirical data comparisons summarized in our three articles now indicate that the world is heading for a massive critical systems collapse far sooner than previously predicted.

4. The Great Global Collapse is now expected to begin between 2025 to 2030. During that time period, the world will begin experiencing radically accelerating climate change and resource depletion-driven and amplified catastrophes that will create initial fast drops in global food production, industrial output, population, and resource use and availability. From 2030 to 2040, these global factors will worsen exponentially in all the mentioned areas. From 2040 to 2050, the worst climate change and related global consequences will be experienced, resulting in about half of humanity perishing. 

5. Rational and ethical politicians, governments, corporations, or citizens can no longer discount the repeated consistency of results of the previous six Club of Rome/MIT-related studies. Their consistency of results should compel immediate short, mid, and long-range planning adjustments for food production, population levels, industrial output, available resources, and pollution, mainly because of the sooner-than-expected steep declines and collapse within those variables. Climate change-driven mass extinctions, and possibly near-total extinctions, are now significantly harder for rational and ethical individuals and organizations to reject. 

6. Unlike other studies, which predicted more time to try to improve the five collapse variables, our research indicates that the world has only about another 3 to 8 years to prevent an even earlier arrival of a climate change consequence-driven global collapse and mass extinction.

7. One of the most significant misunderstandings most people have about climate change is that climate change consequences will steadily get a little bit worse each year, and it will go on like that for many decades, thus matching the slow and gradual global warming temperature rises. This assumption about the many primary and secondary climate change consequences is entirely wrong. 

Climate tipping points, feedback loops, and the primary and secondary climate change consequences will not just get a little bit worse each year. From 2025-2031, climate change consequences will radically increase in severity, frequency, and scale. Few individuals, businesses, or nations will be even remotely prepared for this radical climate consequence escalation without drastic intervention and preparation.  

After 2031, climate change consequences will begin to increase exponentially. This exponential rise in climate consequences will further accelerate global climate chaos and collapse.

It is vital to grasp what climate consequences suddenly increasing exponentially means. In the graph below, the red line is an example of a linear gradual increase trajectory. Linear progression equals 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, etc. The green line is an example of an exponential increase curve and trajectory. Exponential progression equals 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 264, etc.

12. Documentation links to help explain how we came to our study analysis

 

We strongly recommend you review this powerful methane graph for a few moments. If you are a tech person, its underlying documentation is also available. Methane as a gas is 86 times more potent than carbon as a temperature-increasing greenhouse gas; it will rapidly spike up the average global temperatures and eventually to extinction-accelerating levels. 

 

 

16. Just in case you still believe your governments have been protecting you from the accelerating consequences of global heating caused by burning more and more fossil fuel, here on one combined graph, it shows all of the three major fossil fuel-related greenhouse gases, carbon (CO2), methane (CH4) and Nitrous Oxide (N2O).

Acknowledgments 

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