Think the Earth is finite? Think again

[Carlhole]

Spiked

When modern Malthusians insist that resources are finite, they only expose their historical illiteracy, misanthropy and social pessimism.

The main Malthusian idea I think we should challenge is the idea that resources are finite. The idea that the Earth itself is finite. The idea that we live on a finite planet and therefore we can only have a certain number of people, living in a certain number of homes, eating a certain amount of food.

Because it seems to me that the population-control lobby’s obsession with finiteness really exposes what it is all about. It reveals the historical illiteracy and the social pessimism that underpin the pseudo-scientific movement of Malthusianism. The Malthusians’ focus on finiteness explains firstly why they are always wrong about everything; secondly why they are so misanthropic.

On the first point, Malthusians are simply wrong to say that resources are fixed, that we can measure and predict when they will run out. It seems commonsensical to say that the Earth is finite, and a bit mad to say that it isn’t, but it’s important to recognise how fluid and changeable resources are. It’s important to recognise that the usefulness and longevity of a resource is determined as much by us – by the level of social development we have reached – as it is by the existence of that resource in the first place.

A short essay written by a Brit. But if he were a Yank, he'd be a Republican. And this is the sort of refreshing perspective that Tea Party Republicans will bring to American economic policy.

You won't hear them crow about Richard Heinberg and his idea that economic growth is ending, or that we must "Power Down" to save ourselves from a looming die-off due to the dire consequences of peak oil. You won't hear them nag on and on about population overshoot and the Club of Rome. No, I'm afraid you have to run to the other side of the political spectrum for any of that.

[scas]

We are "wrong about everything and misanthropic". Hard to argue with that.

He is right that resources are fluid and have a past and a future.

The past of oil is organisms and sunlight. Their future is in atmospheric gases.

The past of soil nutrients is rock and dead organisms. Their future is at the bottom of the ocean and in our landfills.

The past of arable land is forests and soil ecosystems. The future of that arable land is.....under concrete. Or desert.

The past of our freshwater is in glaciers and groundwater. The future is in the ocean.

The past of organisms is life and evolution. The future is extinction.

[eXpat]

Interesting, i haven´t read such a load of rubbish in a long, long , looong time (and that is including Oily and Anti posts, so that accounts for something), I actually took the time to read the full article.
Some pearls

It seems very clear to me that today, still, the main problem we face is absolutely social rather than natural. We now live under a cult of sustainability, a social and political framework which says that we should never overhaul what exists and should instead make do with the world as it is. The idea of sustainability is anti-exploration, anti-experimentation, anti-risk – all the qualities we need if we are going to make the kind of breakthroughs that earlier generations made with coal and uranium and other resources. In contrast to the past, today human society is accommodating to social limitations, and accepting the idea that they are natural, rather than trying to break through them. The Malthusian mindset is winning, and that is a tragedy for all of us.

Cult of sustainability????? on the contrary, this is the most wasteful society ever! We are proudly unleashing just in some centuries a Permian-level extintion when nature takes several thousands of years to achieve that.

It is a spectacularly one-sided view of people. Because we don’t only use resources; we also create them. We are not only consumers; we are also producers. In fact, I would argue that we have realised the potential of this planet. Without us it would just be another ball spinning through space stuffed with useless coal and pointless uranium. We extracted that coal and uranium and made something amazing with it: modern human society. We created the social conditions in which the Earth’s resources could be used to their full potential; we created the means for extracting and transforming those resources; we created cities, workplaces and homes on the back of those resources; and every time, we managed to get more and more stuff from fewer resources and created new resources along the way.

That´s right, we create! rubish and waste that is, we should be proud of it!, i didn´t know we have fulfilled earth's potential, plundering its resources and creating mountains of waste with it (we are creating even islands of it, checked it in another threads).
Brendan O’Neill I salute you, you have put to shame all the residents trolls in this forum and most of others all over the web.

[Ludi]

Oh you just have a negative attitude, you hater!

[Carlhole]

I actually took the time to read the full article.

And what did you think of MY comment?

[Lore]

Well, I thought about it once again. Took about a second, and yes, it's finite. Not only that the Earth has an expiration date. I feel somewhat refreshed for having said that.

[Carlhole]

Well, I thought about it once again. Took about a second, and yes, it's finite. Not only that the Earth has an expiration date. I feel somewhat refreshed for having said that.

No. I meant my comment about Tea Partiers.

OK, so you are NOT a Tea Party Republican and you are, at least, consistent in your thinking. Congrats.

Because you certainly will NEVER hear Tea Partiers bewail looming civilizational collapse due to resource shortages.

I'm irrritated that some posters around here claim that they are Doomers in some threads, Tea Partiers in others. The two things are mutually exclusive, for chrissake! You can't have it both ways. Brendan O'Neill is what we call a free-market "Conservative" in America or a "Liberal" in England (the terms are reversed in the two countries). His perspective on resources and population is the same as mainstream Republican positions on these things here in America.

[eXpat]

I actually took the time to read the full article.

And what did you think of MY comment?

The one here? i don´t think that is a "refreshing perspective" as you call it, at all, that is just a pile of bollocks for the reasons explained above, I can be proved wrong though, you just have to present a working transmutation machine, so can change back the ashes to trees, the CO2 and methane to oxigen, sand to fertile earth, and oil and corexit to pristine water and I will recant from my Malthusian views.

[Carlhole]

I actually took the time to read the full article.

And what did you think of MY comment?

The one here? i don´t think that is a "refreshing perspective" as you call it, at all, that is just a pile of bollocks for the reasons explained above, I can be proved wrong though, you just have to present a working transmutation machine, so can change back the ashes to trees, the CO2 and methane to oxigen, sand to fertile earth, and oil and corexit to pristine water and I will recant from my Malthusian views.

And do you think that Tea Partiers will start to quote Richard Heinberg and James Howard Kunstler?

This is my main point. It seems clear responders are trying their best to tip-toe around this ugly inconsistency: You can't be a Tea Partier and a Doomer at the same time! The two things are mutually exclusive. If you constantly throw up threads bashing Obama or heralding the Tea Party, you cannot subscribe to doomerism in any credible way whatsoever. Because, according to doomerism, our demise is inevitable and no amount of science or technology can save us from the Olduvai Gorge. And if science and technology can't help us, what makes you think that some dumbass tax policy or deregulation can?

[eXpat]

Nonsense and idioticy have no political party, they can come equally from Republicans, Democrats, Communists, Torys, Labor, Anarchists, Fascists, etc.
And what that guy is spouting is 100% undiluted nonsense and sheer idiocy.
For him, milk comes from the supermarket, he has a magical thinking, things just happen for him, if yesterday there was a forest somewhere and today there´s a parking lot he is enthralled in wonder!, more places were to park!! that ought to be good!, never mind that that land is not arable anymore, or that we are missing the contribution of trees to a breathable atmosphere. That is not profitable! no one is making money out of that! That´s what the environment is out there for, to make a buck out of it!
And lets don´t get started in the population subject!!!, those evil Malthusians want to limit our numbers! . There are gonna be less consumers!!! Oh the horror!

[Carlhole]

Nonsense and idioticy have no political party, they can come equally from Republicans, Democrats, Communists, Torys, Labor, Anarchists, Fascists, etc.
And what that guy is spouting is 100% undiluted nonsense and sheer idiocy.
For him, milk comes from the supermarket, he has a magical thinking, things just happen for him, if yesterday there was a forest somewhere and today there´s a parking lot he is enthralled in wonder!, more places were to park!! that ought to be good!, never mind that that land is not arable anymore, or that we are missing the contribution of trees to a breathable atmosphere. That is not profitable! no one is making money out of that! That´s what the environment is out there for, to make a buck out of it!
And lets don´t get started in the population subject!!!, those evil Malthusians want to limit our numbers! . There are gonna be less consumers!!! Oh the horror!

Well, why do you think I posted it?

His perspective on resources and population is pretty much a Tea Party perspective.

If you see posters around here claiming to be both pro-Tea Party and pro-Peak Oil Doom, you can be well assured that they are totally and utterly full of shit.

[PrestonSturges]

It's the point I was making the other day - there are AGW and Malthusian doomers, and there are the old school Helter Skelter race war paranoid survivalist scanning the sky for UN helicopters. The overlap of the Tea Party and doomerism is not AGW, it's belief in conspiracies like Climategate, Obama's birth certificate, evolution, ACORN, slavery reparations etc that are all supposedly multigenerational global conspiracies controlled by the Illuminauti. And they share their love of AK-47s and Patrick Swayze.

[Carlhole]

It's the point I was making the other day - there are AGW and Malthusian doomers, and there are the old school Helter Skelter race war paranoid survivalist scanning the sky for UN helicopters. The overlap of the Tea Party and doomerism is not AGW, it's belief in conspiracies like Climategate, Obama's birth certificate, evolution, ACORN, slavery reparations etc that are all supposedly multigenerational global conspiracies controlled by the Illuminauti. And they share their love of AK-47s and Patrick Swayze.

There's a lot of nonsense.

Look, it's a simple point I'm making: If you think that peak oil doom will inevitably lead to civilizational collapse, there is no way that governmental policies of any sort can possibly forestall such an event.

Therefore, all these Obama bashing posts and all these Tea Party posts are essentially saying peak oil doom is unimportant. Anyone who continually throws up Obama bashing posts or Tea Party posts is implying that he does not believe that we are under any threat of extinction due to resource shortages or overshoot. It's that simple.

You can say outright that you are an energy cornucopian or you can imply it. It really doesn't matter.

[Cid_Yama]

And they share their love of AK-47s and Patrick Swayze.

You left out NASCAR. You can't leave out NASCAR, Bubba lives for NASCAR and WWE SmackDown.

[EnergyUnlimited]

Look, it's a simple point I'm making: If you think that peak oil doom will inevitably lead to civilizational collapse, there is no way that governmental policies of any sort can possibly forestall such an event.

Many doomers don't care about it.
They are already haggling about, how future more sustainable systems which are going to emerge will look like.
Politicians presiding over collapse period may well (but don't have to) implant their legacy over seeds of emerging alternative future system.

[Carlhole]

Look, it's a simple point I'm making: If you think that peak oil doom will inevitably lead to civilizational collapse, there is no way that governmental policies of any sort can possibly forestall such an event.

Many doomers don't care about it.
They are already haggling about, how future more sustainable systems which are going to emerge will look like.

There's another capitulation. It wasn't all that long ago that EU would not tolerate the slightest equivocation about the certainy of humanity's imminent demise.

Looks like we're fresh out of peak oil doom today, blue light shoppers.

(Poor James Howard Kunstler! So profoundly wrong about Y2K and now he's shamed himself so badly with all that silly PO catastrophism. I wonder how what NEW thing he will ultimately be proven wrong about?)

[EnergyUnlimited]

Look, it's a simple point I'm making: If you think that peak oil doom will inevitably lead to civilizational collapse, there is no way that governmental policies of any sort can possibly forestall such an event.

Many doomers don't care about it.
They are already haggling about, how future more sustainable systems which are going to emerge will look like.

There's another capitulation. It wasn't all that long ago that EU would not tolerate the slightest equivocation about the certainy of humanity's imminent demise.

I was never claiming certainty or even likelihood of humanity demise.
That is Cid's business here.

I was specifically claiming near certainty of modern technological civilization demise.

These are not the same, needless to say.

[pstarr]

You have afforded me a great opportunity to hone my ranting skills. Salute! I justify the following rant on your three mistakes:

A) The post sucks. The title, the linked article, your defense of it-----is mindless ignorant bullshit. Worse. That someone of your obvious education and thinking ability, luxurious time on their hands, and access to this technological wonder the Internet, can consider this crap worthwhile points to a HUGE societal insanity. You (and me for responding) are symptoms of a painfully dysfunctional society. Complete social breakdown. The Singular End of Intelligence. I must be nuts responding to this. Am I nuts?

This thread is an insult to God, Singularity, DNA, Gaia and Logical thinking (take your pick). The Hardworking Well-Intentioned Membership of this Forum, this community, is obligated to wipe clean our Over-Mind and now commit intellectual Hari-Kari, Sepuku Ritual Suicide to atone for our collective sins of somehow allowing this garbage to dirty our holy place.

B) your unmoderated use of the word "sh3t (see above)." No one of authority bothers with your Singular lack of respect for the COC, content, humor, metaphysical complexity, personal good will and grace. Post this shit for all I care. I mean really?

C) your gratuitous attack on Kunstler. Where did that come from? Wait I know. It's a diversion from the crap you posted!. Kunstler is a gentleman with twice your intelligence and one hundred times your success. He has a globe-spanning following and is in demand as a speaker at the finest universities like Harvard and Oxford Univ. You hate him because he is a critic of modern suburban stupidity. You must be trapped in your basement Star Trek Command Center and while Kunstler is free.

[Carlhole]

Wrong again. Shit is shit, no matter how you spell it.

And the political rantsters around here are full of it if they also considers themselves doomers.

[pstarr]

Wrong again. Shit is shit, no matter how you spell it.

And the political rantsters around here are full of it if they also considers themselves doomers.

Evidence once again that the moderators pay you no mind. No mind.