PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

8. A COSMIC HEARTBEAT
ENERGY CONSUMPTION DEPARTED FROM NATURAL GROWTH
IN A PERIODIC WAY
1.3
1.2
% Deviation
1.1
1
0.9
0.8
Electrical Energy
Total Primary Energy
0.7
1800 1850 1900 1950 2000
FIGURE 8.1 The data points represent the percentage deviation of energy consumption
in the United States from the natural growth-trend indicated by a
fitted S-curve. The gray “snake” is an 8% band around a regular variation with
a period of 56 years. The black dots and black triangles show what happened
after the graph was first put together in 1988.
different human endeavors. The energy consumption cycle is reproduced
at the top of the figure to serve as a clock. A gray “snake” is
superimposed to guide the eye through the fifty-six-year oscillation.
The first example is the use of horsepower in the United States.
Again in Historical Statistics 3 we can find data on the horsepower employment
of all prime movers. Prime movers are defined as all the
machines that do their work through the use of primary energy. Cars,
boats and airplanes are all good examples of prime movers, as well as
electric generators and turbines in factories. Even horse-drawn carriages
are prime movers. However, electric trains that use electricity
produced from some other source of primary energy are not classified as
prime movers.
Adding up the total horsepower defined this way, we find spectacular
growth during the last century and a half. But is there any pattern in
the deviations from a natural-growth curve? To find out we can make an
analysis similar to the one done for energy consumption, namely,
177