How to Boil a Frog excerpt - "Exponential Curves".mov

An excerpt from the comedy documentary "How to Boil a Frog". This is the intro to the 5 Big Problems section, with Jon Cooksey playing the Embittered Engineer Guy, one of many characters he plays in the movie. The 5 Big Problems are followed by the 5 Big Solutions and a big steaming side dish o' satire.

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[howtoboilafrog]

@smithonthenet Personally I'm not comforted by the idea that lichen and cockroaches would still be around to enjoy the Earth after we go. I want to save my daughter's life, and yours, and everyone else's - within the context of getting to a place (quickly) where we humans can occupy a sustainable niche on this planet. So those natural cycles can continue in perpetuity, rise and fall.

[howtoboilafrog]

@smithonthenet Well OUR lives aren't endless (good and bad to that I suppose) but I meant just the natural cycle where decline leads to death and rebirth as the elements are recycled into new life forms, or ecosystems decay and renew, or civilizations fall, are cannibalized and used to build new civilizations, etc. Now for the first time we face the possibility of completely extinguishing life - all living things - with the worst case of runaway global warming.

[smithonthenet]

@howtoboilafrog Thanks the explanation. Thank you also for the invite to be a You Tube friend. In this world it is unwise to refuse a genuine request for friendship (on You Tube or otherwise). It is refreshing to witness the revision of an opinion, especially if it leads to learning.

Could you indulge me a little bit more. If ignorant it is because I am a journeyman. With reference to nature's endless cycle do you mean life? I see a cycle in life but nothing to suggest the cycle is endless.

[howtoboilafrog]

@howtoboilafrog So ultimately I would've had to greatly simplify the discussion anyway. What's presented here is more metaphorical than mathematical equivalence, and the positive side is that people do seem to grasp the basic concept. In the end, the movie can only be an invitation to people to do their own research and learn more - if I've caught their attention.

[howtoboilafrog]

@smithonthenet The bell curve as presented is really only a slice of a sine wave - iconic as growth, stasis, decline, death, in an endless cycle of Nature. I learned more later on about carrying capacity and overshoot, and might have presented the graph differently if I'd known - but once you're into carrying capacity, you also have to talk about declining carrying capacity due to environmental degradation from overshoot, and oscillations around the carrying capacity line, and so on.

[smithonthenet]

@smithonthenet Actually can I change my mind? Now that I've watched the film for a third time there is a bit I don't understand. In relation to exponential growth don't bell curves only work if you can demonstrate a 0 value on the y axis? What is the 0 value of global warming and CO2 emissions? These are not something we do but is a consequence of what we do. They are a consequence of a bell curve rather than a bell curve itself (though no doubt eventually they are but now through our doing).

[smithonthenet]

@chrisbelse Could you share your insight? I'd be grateful if you could explain the exceptions to the rules.

You say it is a simplistic but I find it hard (at least that's my excuse for not starting to understand it until well into my 20s). Even if I am just being dumb and it is simplistic I am not sure how the simplicity of an argument in itself undermines the argument. Surely the simplicity of an argument makes the argument stronger? Are you not just denying the correlative?

[smithonthenet]

@howtoboilafrog What do you agree on?

[smithonthenet]

@renxula The axes don't mix? Could you help me understand please?

I don't understand how an "implement that has been used for millennia to shape, split and cut wood; to harvest timber; as a weapon; and as a ceremonial or heraldic symbol" (Wikipedia) has any relevance to graphs. I'll guess it's just a typo and you mean axis (you may just have a different keyboard layout to me).

My understanding is that the x axis is time and the y axis is whatever (population / peak oil / etc etc).

[howtoboilafrog]

@chrisbelse Agreed! That's what I did in the other 86 minutes - this is just the hook to get people into thinking about the concepts of exponential growth, carrying capacity, systems thinking and so on, with a familiar metaphor: pushing things too far and ending up with your life falling apart. A torrent of facts follow this intro!