Pericles, once again, your reply is just based on your opinion. Talk about the pot calling the kettle "Black".

David

Fiona. So much trashtalk out there. Keep up your superb work. You totally get it. You're young, you're informed, you're smart and deeply aware. Your pen is your most powerful weapon, and you wield it like a master already!
If you haven't already done so, check out http://www.populationparty.com/Home/About-Us
You might consider joining (I did) and becoming a political activist as well!

Ummm... isn't this the right place for those opinion thingies, VK3AUU?

>>Pericles, once again, your reply is just based on your opinion. Talk about the pot calling the kettle "Black". David<<

As I have said, there is nothing wrong with having an opinion. I have many of them, as do you, as does Ms Heinrichs. However, I don't attempt to pass off my opinion as being some kind of scholarly examination of facts, reaching a tablets-of-stone conclusion about an immensely complex topic.

I am simply pointing out to the author that her facts-lite approach does her cause no favours. And if she is serious about it, she will take note of the vast lacunae in her presentation, and do a better job next time.

If she carries on the way she has started, she will end up in the clutches of some self-regarding groupuscule such as that offered by Peterslaz:

>>Fiona. So much trashtalk out there. Keep up your superb work. You totally get it. You're young, you're informed, you're smart and deeply aware. Your pen is your most powerful weapon, and you wield it like a master already! If you haven't already done so, check out http://www.populationparty.com/Home/About-Us You might consider joining (I did) and becoming a political activist as well!<<

So much praise. Enough to turn a young gal's head.

Join them at your peril, Fiona, they will simply feed your ego until you stop thinking altogether, and march instead in lock-step with a bunch of lookit-me narcissists.

I suspect you might be better than that.

@Pericles: The rest of the polemic focusses on “peak” predictions. These are as valid today as Malthus' “peak food” predictions were in 1798

I was going to go to some effort to respond to this.

It's wrong on so many levels. Malthus was right. Look up the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe The title is unfortunate. Malthus didn't predict a catastrophe. His actual words quoted at the start of the article aren't a prediction. They are an accurate observation about the world mankind was living in at Malthus's time, and had been living in since time began. That not longer after those words were written the industrial removed food restriction doesn't mean he was wrong.

Anybody familiar with the maths Malthus uses knows this can only be a temporary suspension. It is only a question of how long it will last. Tim Fischer, CSIRO Plant Industry specialist in grain crops appeared recently on http://www.abc.net.au/rn/nationalinterest/stories/2011/3209647.htm : "can the world hope to feed 10 billion people in the future? ... It's a good question. I'm a supply-side person ... population increase in the next 20 years is going to be the hardest one ... Current growths of productivity are inadequate to need."

And you're right, those "peak" predictions are as sound Malthus's observations 2 centuries ago. Did you know production of several minerals have already peaked? http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3086 Since it has only been a few minerals so far we have been able to recycle and substitute. But the planet isn't a magic pudding. Most minerals and energy sources we are currently using will peak this century. Energy is a problem, as you can't recycle stuff you've burnt.

So I was all fired up to show that just like AGW, this peaking is the overwhelmingly accepted position of experts our western scientific culture has created. But then you said this:

@Pericles: author that her facts-lite approach

in response to an ebook that quoted more references than any article I've seen on OLO. I may as well be trying to produce a cargo cultist all those worldly goods were in fact produced by old fashioned hard work.

Are you sure about that rstuart?

>>Malthus was right. Look up the Wikipedia article<<

I don't usually take Wikipedia as the final word - more as a convenient starting-point for research - but since you refer to it, I'll use it here.

"...given the current (relatively low) population growth rate, the Malthusian catastrophe can be avoided by either a shift in consumer preferences or public policy that induces a similar shift."

This view takes into account human nature, as well as the mathematical ratio between exponential growth and arithmetic progression.

The other argument that I find persuasive is that we are not the slaves of mathematics, but the masters of it. When the population exceeds the earth's ability to feed itself, the population will "adjust itself" (i.e. people will either die, or fail to be born) accordingly. Rich-country interference in this process via food-aid and medical-aid programmes is part of the reason that this essentially natural management process is hidden from us.

We are currently sharing our material wealth and know-how with these less fortunate people, which is just as it should be. Should we however ever find ourselves in a position where this is detrimental to our own survival, I suspect - human nature being what it is - that we will stop.

At which point "nature will take its course". I.e., a lot of people will die.

In the meantime, of course, we will continue to develop alternate resources that presently are either inefficient or unaffordable.

And this is an irrelevance

>>...an ebook that quoted more references than any article I've seen on OLO<<

The vast majority of the references are merely the cited opinions of like-minded folk. Where it does tread into potentially authoritative reports, it falls flat on its face.

The reference to "A Sustainable Population Strategy for Australia" is classic. That report states grandly that

"Population growth increases the size of the economy. It does not make Australian residents significantly better off as measured by GDP per capita"

Oh, really?

http://www.indexmundi.com/australia/gdp_per_capita_(ppp).html

But it does, doesn't it. Factually speaking, that is.

Dear Pericles,

There is no association between population growth and per capita economic growth.

See Bob Carr (Chair), Sustainable Development Panel Report: An Appendix to A Sustainable Population for Australia Issues Paper, Department for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, Canberra, 2010 pp. 20-21, including Figure 4.1: Population vs per capita GDP growth.

You can download Carr's report from http://www.environment.gov.au/sustainability/population/publications/issues-paper.html. It's Appendix 3.