Malthus, the false prophet

virgincrude · Heavy Crude Joined: Mar 09, 2006 Posts: 397

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.

Twilight · Expert Joined: Mar 02, 2007 Posts: 2625 Location: UK

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.

It is absurd how we have turned recognition of a fundamental concept into a loaded political act, yet it is not the first time.
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At $20 per barrel, the US was 5% of the world's population using 25% of the world's oil.

At $120 per barrel, the US is 5% of the world's population paying for 25% of the world's oil.

Homesteader · Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 7:45 am Post subject: Re: Malthus, the false prophet

Homesteader · Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 11:05 am Post subject: Re: Malthus, the false prophet

"Key charts, maps and statistics about the world's food supply and global soil"

""Over the past 40 years, approximately 30% of the world's cropland has become unproductive."2

"During the past 40 years nearly one-third of the world's cropland (1.5 billion hectares) has been abandoned because of soil erosion and degradation." 7

"About 2 million hectares of rainfed and irrigated agricultural lands are lost to production every year due to severe land degradation, among other factors." 8

"It takes approximately 500 years to replace 25 millimeters (1 inch) of topsoil lost to erosion. The minimal soil depth for agricultural production is 150 millimeters. From this perspective, productive fertile soil is a nonrenewable, endangered ecosystem."

Link: http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/earth/food-and-soil.php

mididoctors · Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 1:45 pm Post subject: Re: Malthus, the false prophet

CrudeAwakening · Intermediate Crude Joined: Jun 28, 2005 Posts: 741

BigTex · Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 4:57 pm Post subject: Re: Malthus, the false prophet

OilFinder2 · Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 8:57 pm Post subject: Re: Malthus, the false prophet