Back in the 1960s, or maybe even the late 50s, Isaac Asimov (aka The Good Doctor) penned a marvellous and influential little essay titled, from memory, ‘The Power of Geometric Progression’. He began by calculating the approximate volume of the human race. Taking established data on population growth, he went on to determine how long it would take before there were enough of us to cover the entire USA with people standing shoulder to shoulder. From memory, it was something like 800 years. He went on to tell us how, if we continued to breed at the same rate, it wouldn’t take more than another couple hundred years to cover all the dry land on the planet. Not long thereafter, we’d cover the seas as well, and shortly after that the mass of humanity would equal that of the earth. He calculated how many years would pass before, at the same rate of growth, humanity outweighed the solar system, the Milky Way ... I can’t recall how many years it took before every single particle of matter in the universe was used up to make human beings. Wish I could remember the figure, but it was tens of thousands, not millions. That’s 'the power of geometric progression'.

Asimov’s essay was a Mind Bomb, but benign. He wasn’t predicting an apocalypse — just pointing out that we couldn’t, and wouldn’t, continue to propagate endlessly at the same rate. He was right, of course. But he changed the perspective of movers and shakers, using good science to encourage measures which, in the end, defused the Big Issue of the 1960s: Population Explosion. Today, despite increased life-spans, many developed countries rely on immigration to prevent their populations from shrinking. The universe is safe. And Asimov’s Mind Bomb didn’t provoke AFS.

Today’s propagandists aren’t nearly so clever. Making extravagant claims of impending disaster, then labelling anyone who's unconvinced a ‘denialist’, is a hopelessly jejune strategy. So was the Inquisition. Change isn’t a bad thing ... if it’s change for the better. Asimov, tongue firmly in his cheek, was convincing. Climate alarmists aren’t.

OMG rpg! You have just explained to me why I think global warming theories are a crock of bowel motions. It must be because all that mad chatter sounds like a new religion :)

I agree there is climate change. Hasn't the climate changed many, many times before in Earth's history? No surprises there.

What I don't believe is that us insignificant humans can actually DO the changing of the climate ourselves? Isn't that big-noting ourselves in the greater scheme of things?

I don't think that climate change/global warming believers are the only harbingers of doom and gloom though.

We still have plenty of religious people out there willing to damn us all to hell for our 'sinful' life, and willing to blame the climate change as a price we all have to pay for these sins.

Isn't July something ,this year, supposed to be the end of the Earth (again)...?

donkeygod, I think you're attributing too much to Asimov. Asimov's essay probably had even less affect than the hysterical rantings of Paul Ehrlich and Lester Brown (who, despite their dismal track record of failed predictions, are still venerated as prophets of the Gaian religion).

The simple truth is that democracy, emancipation and the market (so derided by the fashionable green-left) did what all the programs (or progroms) and would-be social engineering of the hand-wringing doomsayers never could, and slowed, and will sooner rather than later stop, population growth.

yesterdays hit piece on the abc was full of distortions
[in should have taken notes]

but some bits i recall were a minester talking about polutants
but were only getting a tax on carbon..not polution
[polution is both yesterdays bazz word and todays truth]

take the polutant used to clean solar cells[100 tyimes more destructive than carbon
or the methane..[from home composting]30 times more poluting
put the tax on solar cells and home composting

then there is the delusions propagated in adverts
a small puiece of pig meat costing 300 mils of carbon
yes when intensivly farmed in europe with heating costs added in

or the distortions re meat..cows making methane
[nothing else eats grass][the grass can be eaten and make methane ...or make methane by itself..simply by just dying

but back to the abc hit piece
[it was so blatent i forget most of its lies]
but one that comes to mind was statistical definition

man made charts...saying more disasters
justr who is defining a disaster?
havnt heard of many cyclones this year
or the yanki version of them

then of course there is the haarp
but surly govt hasnt played that card[again]

ps noting the qld floods
were man made [the brisie one]
sems they saved the water..to sell it
then let it go at the WORST TIME..its cause was GREED

the darn damm was overfull...fast nearing two hundreed percent capacity..[now there is an inquiry underway ..and suprise suprise..it wont say nothing till jan NEXT YEAR

[and now we get a new tax]..then the other new tax..on top of the smokers tax..and increased energy prices..on top of signapure-parity colluded pricing ..for their prenium unleaded ..as our our base-price

..well done anna blight an julia

we want representative leaders
and get taxation revenuers playing at being weather girls

one under god, Thursday, 10 February 2011 6:43:25 AM

The Brisbane Dam your talking about is not a storage facility , the Storage Dam was to be some what downstream .
This system was very well designed the idea was to hold the potential flood back then release the water so major flooding would not occur , however ignorance and stupidity prevailed and the Storage dam was never built saving the ALP Govt. of the day millions to spend on Social engineering . Obviously the Flood Mitigation Dam needs to be Empty if it's going to mitigate a flood .

under one god

You forgot the tax they introduced on my Rum and Cokes, intended to try to get me and all those other young buggars to sober up. Why would we?

What with all the gloom and doom and especially with all that bloody Labor induced victimhood about.

Garam yes it was to be south of Brisbane and was called Wolfdene. It was proposed by the Nationals old Joh who also built Wivenhoe. It was suposed to hold Brisbane's water supply while Wivenhoe was only to be for flood mitigation and to top up Wolfdene..

And Hey Guess who scrapped it?

That's right Young Kevvy, one of Labor's great with his wonderful foresight. Yea the one that was up here with his bleeding heart helping his flood victims until he got spiked and ended up in hospital with an infected big toe.

It was his first act when running Wayne Goss's Government in Queensland in the 90's.

Yep another Labor stuff up ... just to make themselves electorally popular, has caused great destruction ... again. You won't read about that in the main sewer media.

Now where's my rum?