‘Forecasting the Future’ Video by Didier Sornette
Dear HumanDHS network friends
Please find below links to a video ‘Forecasting the Future’. Many thanks to our advisory board member Didier Sornette!
Kind regards
Brian Ward
Links:
see video at http://www.commentvisions.com/
http://www.commentvisions.com/month/September/visions/transcription
http://www.humiliationstudies.org/whoweare/board03.php
http://www.ess.ucla.edu/faculty/sornette/
Forecasting the Future
Predicting the future of the planet is usually the domain of Hollywood science fiction movies. This month’s Comment Visions takes the debate over the future of planet out of the hands of screenwriters and into the realm of scientific fact by interviewing Didier Sornette, a French scientist who researches complex systems, modelling how they evolve and develop to predict the future. With global shortages of fossil fuels, economic uncertainty and an ever expanding population, it is a case of present imperfect, future unknown as we confront the energy debate; yet differing opinions over what the forthcoming decades hold for the planet can serve to immobilise the search for solutions. Didier Sornette talks about how he thinks people will respond to these challenges, how the search for solutions will be forced upon humans by the scarcity of resources and the likely ways in which life on earth will look. By 2050 an increased population will encounter fuel and water shortages. Professor Sornette looks at three possible scenarios for the global response to these problems and predicts that future scientific research could create solutions we cannot yet imagine.
Comment Visions Transcription
INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR DIDIER SORNETTE, GEOPHYSICIST, ZURICH, SWITZERLAND BROADCAST SEPTEMBER 2ND, 2008.
COMMENTARY
Where are we all going in such a hurry?
The pace and scope of human activity has given rise to a society that is almost bewildering in its complexity.
Our flair for innovation and exploration has delivered dazzling success, but has brought consequences that may now threaten our very existence.
Many try to predict our future path, but many disagree about what it should be.
Didier Sornette uses the tools of science to model complex systems.
The author of several books and hundreds of papers, Professor Sornette makes forecasts about events as diverse as earthquakes and stock market crashes.
Euronews met Didier Sornette at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich where he teaches the science of risk assessment.
INTERVIEWER
“We’re facing some difficult challenges this century - diminishing fossil fuel supplies, rapid climate change - but is it all bad news, are there positive things that are going to come out of these challenges?”
DIDIER SORNETTE
“I think so. Mankind has shown in the past a remarkable ability to confront difficulties. I think that humans are at their best when they have a challenge to grasp, to attack. So I see these challenges ahead of us as an opportunity to evolve to another level of conscience, to cooperate. We are very good at facing a common enemy, so if we are able to cooperate, to face these challenges we can really evolve to a new level of conscience. So that’s a great opportunity I think.”
INTERVIEWER
“To change, to encourage change?”
DIDIER SORNETTE
“To encourage change, of course. Humans have this bad habit also of refusing change, to be forced to change with a gun in the back, when confronted by great difficulties. But once a tipping point is reached, then we show great adaptability.”
INTERVIEWER
“We have to change our way of behaving?”
DIDIER SORNETTE
“Probably. And we will be forced to do it. And we see signs of this already in, for instance, the oil price and so on. We are going to be forced by the scarcity of the resources to evolve. And this will be a good thing, I think.”
INTERVIEWER
“The changes we’re seeing now, the rise in the price of oil the reduction in fossil fuel supplies, are these things just the beginning, are they going to accelerate? You said they are, there’s going to be a regime change. You say that this is not necessarily catastrophic, but it certainly sounds catastrophic.”
DIDIER SORNETTE
“Yes it’s bad on a short time scale if you like in the sense in that it’s already forcing us to think about alternatives, or changing our style of life. It’s true that if you live in LA, Los Angeles in California where everything has been built around the tradition of cars, of driving. You can’t walk, you have to use this mode of transportation. Then, indeed, you have to have creative ways of solving the problem of not using cars any more. So you have to adapt and adaptation is always costly initially. But this is an initial investment for probably a better life in the future.”
INTERVIEWER
“I’m going to ask you now to make some predictions for 2050 which you said might be a big tipping point. Fossil fuels by then may be too expensive to burn. The global population will be I think around 8 or 9 billion, 2 or 3 billion more than it is now, there will be water shortages…are we going to get through this?”
DIDIER SORNETTE
“In chapter 10 of my book ‘Why Stock Markets Crash’ I envisage 3 scenarios, 3 big possibilities. Let me start with the worst one. The worst one is we fight for the resources, we have islands of gated communities of very rich, wealthy people protected by armies and barbarians roaming. It would be like the scenario of ‘Mad Max’, you know, ‘Mad Max’ in Australia. You can imagine this kind of science fiction scenario and that is a serious possibility.
“Another possible scenario is a smooth transition to sustainability and I’m hoping that this will be the middle scenario, that due to the building up of global conscience, that we learn how to cooperate, to put aside our innate selfishness and know how to take pleasure in helping others, in developing ethical behaviour and integrity, so that we look at the longer term.So that could be a middle scenario, a quite good one.”
“Now another one if we are more optimistic, there could be some lucky circumstance, like fundamental discoveries. This could be like the joker. We could for example invent new ways of transportation to other planets. So there could be the possibility of evolving to new continents which would be new planets, or breaking the bottleneck to colonise the oceans. That’s a joker, that’s a possibility and that’s why people should finance more science. It’s very risky, we cannot predict what will happen, but there is this possibility. I would not bet all my money on this, of course, I would go for the sustainability path, but there is this golden egg, the possibility of very surprising outcomes.”
ENDS