CYCLIC AND STATIONARY MODES OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF CIVILIZATION IN GLOBAL

Abstract

The World2 model of civilization was modified using the Mathcad software environment. Based on the resulting Mir 2MC model, long-term scenarios of the evolution of civilization were considered upon the premise that only fuel resourced are unrenewable and were compared with the main conventional global models and the respective algorithms of transition of modeled systems to stable equilibriums. With account of the ecological demography data about convergent oscillations of populations on their ways to steady states below maximum levels sustainable by their environmental resources, it has been shown that this may occur if resourced for growth have been accumulated before growth began. This is what is exactly true for fossil fuel resources. The initial level of unrenewable resources is underestimated three- to fourfold in the World2 model. The developmental scenarios suggested by the Mir-2MC model show that increasing the initial levels of resourced may lead to oscillations of all components of a modeled system. The number of oscillations are in the range from two to four, and population size in each of the oscillation is limited by not fuel resources but by food deficit and environmental pollution. Each scenario leads to a stationary population size ranging from 1.3 to 1.5 billion. In scenarios accounting of shale oil resources, oscillations number may reach 15. Increasing the available power by thermonuclear power supplies transforms developmental trajectories into undamped harmonic oscillators. Only population control measures can be effective in preventing the repetitions of population size oscillation. The first oscillation is already inevitable. The time to prevent it has been lost. A stationary state is possible only following the first or the second oscillation. The optimal time of transition to a final stationary state depends on the position of the locally stationary state of population size in time. This state is determined by the phase portrait in the “population size – relative population increment” plain (Allee curve). Population size in a locally stationary state is assumed as the initial condition in the logistic model of population growth, and the tolerable threshold of population size is found to be 1.5 billion. The time to Lyapunov stationary state of the World system critically depends on the single parameter, which is population increment coefficient in the locally stationary point.