Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 8:21 am Post subject: Re: Malthus, the false prophet
Malthus was more right than he could know. The FF boom makes his correctness pointed. That is, without FF, the chart of human population has a slow rise and then a leveling out.
With FF, the chart of human population has a parabolic spike and a precipitous dive. In essence, an exclamation point for his theory. _________________ Massive Human Dieoff must occur as a result of Peak Oil. Many more than half will die. It will occur everywhere, including where you live. If you fail to recognize this, then your odds of living move toward the "going to die" group.
Joined: Aug 03, 2006 Posts: 4071 Location: Graceland
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 9:49 am Post subject: Re: Malthus, the false prophet
Cashmere wrote:
Malthus was more right than he could know. The FF boom makes his correctness pointed. That is, without FF, the chart of human population has a slow rise and then a leveling out.
With FF, the chart of human population has a parabolic spike and a precipitous dive. In essence, an exclamation point for his theory.
Fossil fuel was the sugar cube dropped in the petri dish. _________________
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 10:45 am Post subject: Re: Malthus, the false prophet
Mr.Bill:
Quote:
resource depletion; and, yes, resistance to GMO and other techno-progress from certain groups of consumers (mainly, the well-fed ones I might add).
Have you seen the movie I posted a link to about Monsanto? It's disappeared from Google and other sources I posted at the time, but you can still find it here:
Wide Eyed Cinema
In it, you'll find ample proof that it is certainly NOT just the well fed and able to choose, who are resistent to GM food.
Apart from that, you seem to have hit the nail on the head!
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 1:52 pm Post subject: Re: Malthus, the false prophet
Twilight wrote:
Malthus only has to be right once, cornucopians have to be right every time.
LOL! Yup.
Malthus was trying to understand the dynamics of a system. He correctly saw that exponential growth would often lead to overshoot and collapse. The system is more complicated than he expected. That does not make him a false prophet, he simply did not account for all the possibilities. He did however corretly infer that there exist in these systems limits to growth. We are experiencing a grwoth limiting factor right now. Oil supply cannot grow fast enough long enough to fuel the type of growth we have seen in the past. So the grwoth has to come from somewhere esle or not at all. That said oil has left us in overshoot regarding living standards in the west and overall population. A collapse is coming and those in the know see beyond the rhetoric to the substance. _________________ I return to you now at the turning of the tide.
Joined: Mar 09, 2007 Posts: 219 Location: No. Calif.
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 5:30 pm Post subject: Re: Malthus, the false prophet
The fact that the financial community's MSM repeats incessantly how wrong Malthus was, should be a clue to how right he was and is. I like the 'two centuries' of Malthus being 'wrong' (or is it 'right'): Of course, coal was probably just beginning to be exploited in 1800 and then dominated that century. Then oil was to dominate the next century.
So we have two 'super-cycles' of resource utilization before the crash, oil comprising the smaller in the time scale (but much more valuable) and coal comprising the longer time scale. Reading wikipedia on Malthus, he speaks of the lower working classes being emploited in this cycle. With our higher per capita energy use, this now seems to apply to the middle-class. That picture of tent-city California seems to come to mind.
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 11:04 pm Post subject: Re: Malthus, the false prophet
BigTex wrote:
Malthus was right, he just didn't fully grasp the concept of overshoot and how the effects he predicted wouldn't be felt until the technology induced state of overshoot had reached its limits.
We will see that soon enough, and everyone will recognize how obviously correct his analysis was--i.e., exponential population growth and linear food production growth cannot last long without big problems occurring.
...and it is such an obvious answer. I know it's weak logical argumentation, but Malthus hypothesis and conclusion are common sense. _________________ anagami.net
Joined: Mar 26, 2008 Posts: 1030 Location: Seattle
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 11:52 pm Post subject: Re: Malthus, the false prophet
MrBill wrote:
but certainly anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that we are at an inflection point now where those gains are starting to fall behind steeper increases in population growth,
There are no "steeper increases in population growth." The rate of human population growth has been slowing down for at least 40 years.
_________________ Abundance - what a concept!
Last edited by OilFinder2 on Fri May 16, 2008 11:56 pm; edited 1 time in total
Joined: Mar 26, 2008 Posts: 1030 Location: Seattle
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 11:55 pm Post subject: Re: Malthus, the false prophet
jedinvest wrote:
The fact that the financial community's MSM repeats incessantly how wrong Malthus was, should be a clue to how right he was and is.
Well then, if the MSM repeats incessantly that we're at or near peak oil (which they do), that should be a clue to how wrong they are. _________________ Abundance - what a concept!
Joined: Aug 03, 2006 Posts: 4071 Location: Graceland
Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 12:08 am Post subject: Re: Malthus, the false prophet
OilFinder2 wrote:
MrBill wrote:
but certainly anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that we are at an inflection point now where those gains are starting to fall behind steeper increases in population growth,
There are no "steeper increases in population growth." The rate of human population growth has been slowing down for at least 40 years.
Any growth rate above 0% is exponential over time. _________________
Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 2:00 am Post subject: Re: Malthus, the false prophet
Oilfinder2, I have to admit, I like your posts. I enjoy entertaining the opposite to the general consensus. These days, and for a long long time, society has led us to assume the glass is always half full, there is never any Good News. Good News is deemed childish, suspect, and we do our damndest to anull it.
I hate the way people maintain their 'glass half full' posture: "No No Dammit! It's NOT going to be okay I tell you! It's not ! It's NOT!!" Generally on this forum we're in posession of a little bit more information than the average guy (patting ourselves on the back by joining the disussions, knowingly) but underneath it all, we're still basically an ignorant bunch of wankers, sounding off. Constantly reaffirming our glass half full vision.
The truth is, it's never easy to imagine the future, always easier to foresee death and destruction, miserable failure rather than success. Those things are easier to see in the mind's eye than the childishly hopefull better outcome we don't really know as a solid truth. It has become a prerequisite to entering adulthood, to assume an aura of sad pessimism and knowing foresight which predicts that the end of the world (again) is nigh, and we're responsible and there's nothing (nothing I tell you!) we can really do .... what a cop out, what a failure to engage all our potential. Just lie down like dogs, moaning ocassionally. And barking at anybody who tries to show an opposite.
Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 3:59 am Post subject: Re: Malthus, the false prophet
Malthus expressed the fundamental idea of limits being reached eventually. As others would put it:
Of course, resource limits are "soft" in that they can be pushed up against hard ones through human agency.
The timing of such events and the measures we take to achieve this have been a rich source of debate for 200 years, but the natural conclusion is indisputable. No critic of Malthus successfully argues the fundamental idea is wrong, only that a hard limit was not reached in some interval and that our civilisation will not be run to the limit, which is distant.
That is all the debate comes down to, distance and intervals. The idea remains true, it is fundamental, even critics must argue within its framework whether they realise it or not.
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