Ugo Bardi

The Goddess Gaia returns

Always the magic words: it "depends on what you measure."

Do Mask Mandates Reduce the Diffusion of Viral Pandemics?

“The Limits to Growth” (Meadows, 1972) generated unprecedented controversy with its predictions of the eventual collapse of the world's economies. First hailed as a great advance in science, “The Limits to Growth” was subsequently rejected and demonized. However, with many national economies now at risk and global peak oil apparently a reality, the methods, scenarios, and predictions of “The Limits to Growth” are in great need of reappraisal. In The Limits to Growth Revisited, Ugo Bardi examines both the science and the polemics surrounding this work, and in particular the reactions of economists that marginalized its methods and conclusions for more than 30 years. “The Limits to Growth” was a milestone in attempts to model the future of our society, and it is vital today for both scientists and policy makers to understand its scientific basis, current relevance, and the social and political mechanisms that led to its rejection. Bardi also addresses the all-important question of whethe

As we dig, drill, and excavate to unearth the planet’s mineral bounty, the resources we exploit from ores, veins, seams, and wells are gradually becoming exhausted. Mineral treasures that took millions, or even billions, of years to form are now being squandered in just centuries–or sometimes just decades. Will there come a time when we actually run out of minerals? Debates already soar over how we are going to obtain energy without oil, coal, and gas. But what about the other mineral losses we face? Without metals, and semiconductors, how are we going to keep our industrial system running? Without mineral fertilizers and fuels, how are we going to produce the food we need? Ugo Bardi delivers a sweeping history of the mining industry, starting with its humble beginning when our early ancestors started digging underground to find the stones they needed for their tools.

For the first time in recorded history, humanity is shrinking. Fertility rates are collapsing worldwide, even in countries long considered immune to the trend. The population peak is closer than anyone expected, and in most industrialized countries, the descent has already begun. In The End of Population Growth, Ugo Bardi brings the systems-dynamics approach pioneered by The Limits to Growth into the 21st century, with new data, new models, and a frank assessment of what comes next. Aging societies, crumbling pensions, mass migration, abandoned infrastructure — the turbulence ahead is real. So is the opportunity: fewer people means less pressure on a planet already strained to its limits. But the transition will not manage itself. This book is a guide to navigating terrain no civilization has crossed before.