...This article describes well a psychological version of Apoptosis: The “Doom Gene” (mdg4). Hollywood has captured the human tendency to embrace catastrophe to reinforce our societies angsty relationship with the world by promoting superheros who constantly conflict with evil, or who are actually evil themselves at times.

...The conflict between good and evil is millions of years old: Our infatuation with doom is our attempt at accepting the reality of the Alpha and omega of existence itself.

I think Paul Ehrlich was quite prescient in his "population Bomb" book. It is many years since I read it and perhaps I should take it off my shelf, dust it off and read it again. However, we have had millions killed in wars over land disputes, and atomic threats still pervade news stories. According to the World Hunger Education Service there are presently 925,000,000 who do not have enough food. Religion is a growing problem in the world. Sea, air, land and water are being polluted more and more. It has been estimated that we need 3 planets the size of ours to provide the resources to provide a standard of living equal to that enjoyed by the West. Perhaps he was just a bit too premature in his forecasts ?

Having said that, "necessity is the mother of invention", so perhaps also man has the ingenuity to mitigate a lot of these problems as has been shown in the past. I still consider it a worry though.

Snake - sorry, disagree with almost all points. A million killed in land disputes since 67 (when the book came out)? Now where did that statistic come from? And what land disputes - unless you want to stretch a point and call the Vietnam war a land dispute? The wars in Africa have been about resources since the end of the cold war, mostly.. The figure on the number of hungry people may or may not be right, but the part left out is that it is far smaller now, certainly proportionally and perhaps even in absolute terms, than about a decade or so ago.

The key reason for the change is China and India dumping most of the socialist ideology that restrained economic growth.

Ehrlich never had any idea about any of this and still seems to be completely clueless. the only reason some people listen to him, is that he plays to innate fears..

i am sort of with Snake on this one. All is not well, although probably never was.

http://riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/front-page/brazil-land-dispute-deaths-up-10-percent-in-2012/#

AN Ivy league study of 300 economists over 30 years concluded; that their average predictive ability, was no better than a dart throwing monkey. Moreover, as their reputations/notoriety grew; their predictive abilities worsened even further!
If we wait long enough, Ehrlich's predictions of our ultimate destruction will be proved, as our sun expands and expands, and eventually turns our world into a fried crisp.
In the interim, there are lots of thing we can and should do, to extend our stay and our survival.
Universal education, endless, cheap renewable energy, recycled everything, the end of food wastage and wasted waste!
And if we are not actually, effectively looking for that ultimate and endless cheap energy, we are hardly likely to find it!
Simply setting aside or temporarily suspending disbelief, might assist?
And yes, we do need more planets, and an endlessly reliable energy source to power the stellar drive, we need to take us there, en masse!
Perhaps the answer lies in understanding dark matter; or all eleven dimensions?
Or why a spinning top, loaded with symmetrically placed, powerful rare earth magnets, is seemingly able to defy gravity?
Or why the addition of a cobalt catalyst into electrolysis, quite literally doubles the amount of hydrogen produced, for the same energy input? [Patented process!]
Meaning, as we burn that same hydrogen output, in a catalytically assisted fuel cell, we can create a net gain in energy, of around 30%, as virtually free energy? [Cold fusion?]
[Now, I want one of those in my new Australian made, electrically powered car.]
We humans have always/always solved overcrowding or too few resources, with migration!
Rhrosty.

Ehrlichs problem is that like Malthus he was ahead of his time.
It is impossible to foresee what developments lie ahead that will alter the time line but the events forecast by both will occur eventually.
That he is so sure of himself I can empathise with. I get quite frustrated when the proles and denialists cannot see the wood for the trees. You also get grouchy with age.

India might have increased it's food production with the green revolution but it has not stopped food poverty and now the soil has been degraded, production is dropping, farmers are committing suicide, an unsustainable situation.

Also Peak oil was not on the radar when population bomb was written and now it is here despite the hype about "shale/tight oil", which will never provide sufficient to bail the world out of it's dependence on oil.
At the moment in WA, wheat farmers are walking off their land due to perpetual drought and the US is in the grip of drought also.
What is going to become very scarce forcing the price out of reach of the poor.

Don states "In our own country, the environment is in better shape than it was half a century ago". I find this a little hard to reconcile with.

Ehrlich's forecasts were too early; the green revolution changed all that.

Perhaps those doubting the veracity of his prognostications should re-read the Club of Rome's 'Limits to Growth'

‘Limits to Growth’ was prominently “debunked” by pro-growth business interests. In reality, this “debunking” merely amounted to taking a few numbers in the book completely out of context, citing them as “predictions” (which they explicitly were not), and then claiming that these predictions had failed. The ruse was quickly exposed, but rebuttals often don’t gain nearly as much publicity as accusations, and so today millions of people mistakenly believe that the book was long ago discredited.

In fact, the original Limits to Growth scenarios have held up quite well. A recent study (2008 I think) by the CSIRO concluded, “[Our] analysis shows that 30 years of historical data compares favourably with key features of [the Limits to Growth] business-as-usual scenario...”.

The authors fed in data for world population growth, consumption trends, and the abundance of various important resources, ran their computer program, and concluded that the end of growth would probably arrive between 2010 and 2050. Industrial output and food production would then fall, leading to a decline in population.

The ‘Limits to Growth’ scenario study has been re-run repeatedly in the years since the original publication, using more sophisticated software and updated input data. The results have been similar each time.

We are decimating world fish stocks, losing topsoil at unprecedented levels, depleting aquifers, over using fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides etc, in general depleting non-renewal resources and we have a global ponzi economy based on consumers and governments all increasing debt in the name of the false god ‘Growth’. Our current economic model does not reconcile with social progress and is broken. It is not based on productivity and equality.

You don't have to be a genius to work out that things cannot keep going this way without some sort of blow-back occurring.

It seems to be important for some people to be constantly reassured that life is dreadful, that doom and gloom are just around the corner, that the world is run by faceless plutocrats who despise us peasants and would like us to just go away, that all the nice fluffy animals are soon going to die out, that nations will go to war over a shortage of water, that our cities are too polluted and crowded for anyone to live in, that the next financial crisis will impoverish everyone so that we have to scratch around for food, that climate change will render the world totally uninhabitable, that these shores will soon be stuffed to the gills with dusky freeloaders intent on subverting our way of life to the misery of religious subjection etc. etc. etc.

And that's just the daily fare here at Online Opinion.

All Mr. Ehrlich has done is to tap into this fear, in order to sell books, and stay on the gravy-train of paid interviews, seminars, lectures and "guest appearances" for the rest of his natural life.

It is much the same in other smoke-and-mirror industries. There are folk out there who rake in massive sums from motivation seminars, how-to-get-rich seminars, how-to-succeed-in-business seminars and the like.

They all tap into our basic insecurities, our sense of inadequacy and our existential angst, in order to line their own pockets with our cash.

As P T Barnum proved on many occasions, there are many people out there who seem to relish being hoodwinked.

Like all socialized intellectual ruling classes (SIRC’s), we view questions such as “why are they so sure they are right” as superfluous and not appreciated. We know we are right.

Mostly you misunderstand because you lack the intelligence. It is clear from your questioning of our orthodoxy that there are not enough SIRC’s and too many of you. It follows that when we SIRC’s postulate that we must limit global populations we do not mean us, we mean you, and that any “peak” something must be responded to by the masses and not us.

The negative doom saying mantra of “peak” anything and everything is not open for debate. We are not required to comply with infantile illusions such as empirical evidence, proof or even establish our own credibility; we are above such modern constructs.

It has been said that SIRC’s are ahead of their time. This is so true and our prognostications should indeed be viewed through the medieval prism of that time;

-the divine right of egotistical elites
-the inferiority of women
-the idea that a wise State knows all
-the idea that the individual is always right
-the bitter-sweet addiction, that transforms an elitist doctrine from a mere model into something sacred and worth killing for.

Regards, P.

Why is Ehrlich so sure? Let's ask his colleague Stephen Schneider...
"We need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This 'double ethical bind' we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. "

Its not about being sure...its about projecting an air of certitude so as to garner support.

Of course, in Ehrlich's case its also about protecting a reputation. His whole life, his whole career, is based on the failed predictions of the Population Bomb and its successors. Some might simply admit error and move on but people like Ehrlich just double-down and try to brazen through, never admitting error.

Since so many people liked and fell for his failed predictions, they likewise desperately seek reasons as to why they weren't wrong and turn a blind eye to any expose of the errors.

Ehrlich made specific predictions with specific time frames. If he'd said millions were going to die from famine in the next 2 centuries, his book would have sunk without a mention. It was the immediacy that made his name and fortune.

Only after the predictions fail do we suddenly see him and his cheer-squad start to equivocate over timing. I can already see some apologist in the year 2100 saying, "oh well Ehrlich was right and that famine is gunna happen any decade now".

People want to be scared. There is a segment who want to believe we are inches away from disaster. They are rarely right and rarely learn. That's why AGW is so successful.

But Ehrlich did do one good deed for the prediction business. His big error was to make predictions about what'd happen in his lifetime. The doomsayers now have the good sense to make predictions about things that'll happen once they're gone, or at least retired....eg the doomsayers now tell us the worst of AGW will happen post 2050.

Thanks Don, great article again. You continue to prove that not all academics are not egotistical boofheads, although the bulk of the responding posts proves that at least 90% are.

We see the scarcely concealed horror in Paul Ehrlich, & so many of our self elected academic elites, that the despised masses can live as well as they do.

At a recent party I could not help but hear some "B" grade academic bemoaning the fact that his once nice suburb was filling up with riff raff. He managed a real sneer in his voice as he referred to them as "trades type people".

A friend was glancing rather nervously at me, worried about an explosion from my direction. He need not have worried, I can't be bothered with these plastic people, these mere paper cut outs of what a human should be.

From Ehrlich to a junior tutor, the disdain for real people is huge & growing. A Chinese type cultural revolution would do wonders for our gene pool, but meanwhile, let them chatter away, it keeps them off the streets.

Pericles, says
that doom and gloom are just around the corner, that the world is run by faceless plutocrats who despise us peasants and would like us to just go away, that all the nice fluffy animals are soon going to die out, that nations will go to war over a shortage of water, that our cities are too polluted and crowded for anyone to live in, that the next financial crisis will impoverish everyone so that we have to scratch around for food, that climate change will render the world totally uninhabitable, that these shores will soon be stuffed to the gills with dusky freeloaders intent on subverting our way of life to the misery of religious subjection etc.

And you are right.

What I find rather creepy about the doomsayers is the sense that they actually want the world’s economy and society to collapse. The 100% failure rate of Ehrlich’s predictions are met not with relief, but with disappointment. Like some weird fundamentalist sect whose predictions of the imminent second coming fail to materialise, they simply re-set the clock to another date in the no-too-distant future when the collapse will happen.

Meantime, another piece of good news for the rest of us. The UN reports that its millennium goal of “halving, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1.25 a day” was achieved five years early.

http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/poverty.shtml

The majority of posts above prove "optimism bias" in human cognition. Pick any subject: Climate Change? Optimism. Crude Oil Supply? Optimism. Future Economic Growth? Optimism. Future technological advances in energy? Optimism, Flying cars? Optimism, you get the idea.

One problem, "optimism bias" is so deeply ingrained, so much a part of who humans are, that 99.9% of people are totally blind to its existence.

A fish is always the last to know what sort of water it swims in.

Unfortunately it's our delusional optimism, the obligatory hope that makes the world work, even when it's not working.

In a recent study published in Nature Neuroscience, researchers found that “people who are very optimistic about the outcome of events tend to learn only from information that reinforces their rose-tinted view of the world. This is related to ‘faulty’ function of their frontal lobes.”

People’s predictions of the future are optimistic, thus a problem why human optimism is so pervasive, when reality continuously confronts us with information that challenges these biased beliefs.

Safe sex? Saving for retirement? What about learning from cautionary information that shows humans are altering climate, destroying oceans, and running out of easily exploitable oil? And that's just a partial list.

The researchers identified the optimist's brain suffers from "faulty" functioning in the frontal lobes.

If 95% of people are optimists, then the large majority of humans have "faulty" frontal lobes.

In order to emphasise the profound craziness, unbridled self-destructiveness, and astonishingly delusional nature of looking forward to enhanced oil & gas production or easier transpolar shipping in the Arctic forty years from now at a time when the Earth's biosphere is engulfed in an ecological crisis caused by human actions like those previously mentioned, well then go on believing we don’t have anything to worry about.

I am a realist and know the desire to make money is now the primary source of the planets predicaments.

People also need to realise you can solve problems, you can’t resolve predicaments.

Can’t wait to spend that $1.25 a day, great help that would be!

Your expertise cut'n'paste is failing you, Robert LePage.

>>Pericles, says... that doom and gloom are just around the corner etc. etc.<<

You missed out the first part.

Pericles actually said...

"It seems to be important for some people to be constantly reassured that life is dreadful, that doom and gloom are just around the corner etc. etc."

If you are going to quote me, please do me the courtesy of quoting accurately.

Thank you.

Geoff of Perth
Surely the test of whether a person is unduly optimistic or unduly pessimistic is how many of their expectations are realised. In Ehrlich’s case, that appears to be about 0%.

And yes, $1.25 a day is not great, but the key point is that absolute poverty rates are falling fast. If the Ehrlichs of the world were correct, the trend would be the other way.

Hello Geoff of Middle Peak Perth,

We are both on notice from Graham Young for abuse so I will go as hard as usual in anticipation of your response.

You suggest that you are a realist? That in itself evidences that this is the last thing you represent. You are as full of the Club of Rome and Agenda 21 nonsense as you always were.

The nice thing about your ideology is that that there is absolutely no requirement for cognitive effort. You continue to adopt the opinion of others and make no effort to form an opinion of your own.

Sooner or later you will be forced to recognize that you are so full of other people’s opinion that you will eventually disappear up your own conspiracy theory clacker.

The good news for us in the East is that the WA election result renders you a representative of a shrinking minority. God bless the sensible majority in WA

Spindoc, yes it is unfortunate that I am on the same hit list as you, makes me cringe actually.

By the way, I was fortunate to see the party I voted for last Saturday win the election, so you can take your false assumtion and blinkered bias and stick it up your own conspiracy theory clacker.

Oh and thanks for 'your' "God's blessing" fortunately for me I am not religious

Yours in anticipation of another irrelevant rant

Geoff

Paul Ehrlich may be just a headline grabber, a clever charlatan, or a deluded but charismatic spokesperson railing against the evolution of an increasingly unwholesome and evil world wherein the divide between the haves and have-nots moves inexorably to abyssal and irrecoverable dimensions. As we sit in our ivory towers and criticize his message as outrageous, and recognise that he has no real interest in the downtrodden, but solely in his own status, we nonetheless attempt by our criticism to absolve ourselves from any responsibility for those 'others' struggling to eke out a meagre existence on rubbish tips or in virtual slave labour, those dispossessed of forest homes or small holdings by loggers or big agriculture, those with no future but endless scraping at the bottom of the barrel.

We live so much in our minds, switched on to our technology, virtually free from want, with our headline interests being whether NewStart is fair, whether single parents are rorting the system, or if marriage equality should be adopted, quarantined from the hardships of those outside our privileged existence, far from the front lines of a war for survival raging beyond our coveted, closeted feather bed. We have a choice between selective myopia or the salve of donating to the likes of World Vision or the Freedom from Hunger Campaign, but we mostly remain aloof, inward, uncaring that our privilege, and that of the whole of the developed world, is inevitably reeking havoc in other parts, inducing others to aspire to our example.

But we have made the early running through colonialisation and subsequently through power, influence and corporatisation, through the rise and rise of Capitalism, and so we continue to exploit those 'others'. We preach education and empowerment of women to stem overpopulation and want, and we simultaneously continue our gluttony in reassurance of our impunity.

While we push for immortality through unhindered procreation we secretly wish a sterilisation epidemic would envelope those 'others', leaving us free to glean every last ounce, until we too vanish into an oblivion of our own making, unless ..?

A few people on this thread need a good dose of Prozac.

Ehrlich, like 90% of academics, needs to get a real job.

Geoff:

"The researchers identified the optimist's brain suffers from "faulty" functioning in the frontal lobes."

Well, at least they have lobes; I'm not so sure about you and the rest of your mates; you guys would send milk sour; maybe it's a vitaman A deficiency.

The essence of Ehrlich’s message is rock-solid.

We have misused our technological abilities to grow ever-more food and hence prop up continuous population growth. Collectively, we have just so terribly missed the basic necessity of balance. Balance between supply and demand, such that the demand can be met comfortably in an ongoing manner, without any negative consequences for the environment.

When we start using our brains in order to achieve this sacred balance, ie; sustainability, rather than to pander to continuous expansionism, we will finally be on the right track.

Thomas Malthus, Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome were all well and truly on the right track.

For all of Ehrlich’s miscalculations or overstated negative consequences of our foolish actions in too short a timeframe, he is a million miles ahead of those who poo-poo his message and think that we can just keep on keeping on in the same old continuous-growth-with-no-end-and-no-negative-consequences manner, hey Pericles.

Ehrlich is a born pessimist. He has ignored the substantial productivity advances made in food production -- for example, see Matt Ridley's YouTube presentation, " How Fossil Fuels are Greening the Planet", at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-nsU_DaIZE

Great Raycon "Ehrlich is a born pessimist. He has ignored the substantial productivity advances made in food production -- for example, see Matt Ridley's YouTube presentation, " How Fossil Fuels are Greening the Planet", too bad fossil fuels are finite or did you not think about this tiny little chink in the Cornucopian dream.

Like most people, the red pill has been swallowed, fracking will save us all, energy will not be an issue, optimism, optimism, optimism. Too bad the true data supports a different view and outlook for the 7 billion plus souls on this finite planet.

Cohenite is still prattling as usual after failing at another attempted post this week to debunk climate science, pathetic really.

Proves my point "One problem, "optimism bias" is so deeply ingrained, so much a part of who humans are, that 99.9% of people are totally blind to its existence."

Sums up the likes of Cohenite, Spindoc and all the other deniers who haunt this site.

It seems to me that the more educated people get the more refined they become in their stupidity. It belies belief that with more than 100% evidence they still fail to see but hey, such is education.

Rhian says:
*What I find rather creepy about the doomsayers is the sense that they actually want the world’s economy and society to collapse.*

Well the main reason for that is, there is no way that the bulk of the population is ever going to curb their consumerism, procreation and destruction of the earths ecosystem.
The only way to save the earth now is to let the plague species destroy itself and let the rest survive.

The only way to save the earth now is to let the plague species destroy itself and let the rest survive.
Robert Le Page,
I think that's about right but gee, they'll drag so many of us others down with them. Then again, life's not fair is it ?
Your point about curbing consumerism is particularly relevant to Australians.

An optimist has been defined as someone who thinks the world is about as good as it could be, while a pessimist is someone who fears that the optimist is right.

The choice is not the stark either/or posed by Ludwig, because human beings are great at learning, and adapting. Yes, they mightn't do it as fast as you might wish, but they do learn, and the fact that the world has managed to feed its larger population more adequately than was the case when that population was half its present size is an indication. Conditions of life are better for a larger proportion of the world than they were fifty years ago, life expectancy is longer, and so on.

And the same applies to the environment: we care a lot more for it than we did fifty years ago. There are more national parks, farmers have joined in land-care programs, and so on. We know more, and can do more. Yes, we haven't sorted out where people can build houses, and we haven't sorted out bushfire prevention. You might wish that the speed could be faster, but it's folly to suggest that nothing haas happened, or that we have actually moved backwards.

Populations do level out when women are educated and have careers of their own. Yes, that produces other problems, but it reduces birthrates. In short, everything is a bit of a muddle, but I see the glass as half-full, not as half-empty.

Verballed by Geoff:

"Cohenite is still prattling as usual after failing at another attempted post this week to debunk climate science, pathetic really."

I was debunking the Climate Commission, successfully; 'climate science' has already been debunked; I was dancing on its grave.

Ludwig says this"

"Thomas Malthus, Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome were all well and truly on the right track."

That's as finer bunch of pious, sanctimonious ratbags as you could dig up.

In a way humanity is at a crossroad; I can remember the 1950's, amongst all the paranoia and hysteria of the Cold war reading Heinlein, Asimov and other great SF writers and being made aware of the universe through the prism of speculative science literature. This coincided with the space race and the notion that the reaches of space beckoned as the next frontier.

That can-do, positive attitude has been lost in recent time under the yoke of the lie of AGW; AGW is a product of small mean minds who are nonetheless overbearingly arrogant. But their arrogance and sense of superiority is about control and a quashing of humanity and the ambitions of humanity.

It is a terrible thing that humanity is being controlled by such navel-gazers, petty narcissists and mean minded third-raters.

I would have expected by now that humanity would have a permanent colony on the Moon and be regularly visiting Mars. Now it seems further away then in the 1950's.

The pessimists are not just pessimists, they are spoilers whose smallness seeks only to constrain humanity; they are just little losers who have managed to infect the rest of us

Ehrlich has been comprehensively incorrect on numerous issues. Once he be bet an Economist, Julian Simon, that the price of five resources would increase over time while Simon said they would decrease. Ehrlich lost on every single count.

Ehrlich is not only prepared to humiliate himself but also do it publicly, yet this does not faze his supporters apparently.The fact that some still have faith in him is a testament to human stupidity more than anything else.

He is science's equivalent to the end of the world preacher who continually gets the date wrong, resets it and gets it wrong again. His supporters still follow because he preaches their favourite topic - doom and gloom and does so with conviction.

Well Robert, excluding hand to mouth survival, most food production is reliant on fuel!
One would conclude, if we stick with fossil fuels, and the increasing demands on same, food and everything that has a transport component, is simply going to get dearer, or unaffordable for a growing cohort of underprivileged or poor.
Of course there are other much cheaper options. Like turning our waste, virtually all of it, into methane, and then passing that methane through a relatively simple catalytic process that knocks off a few hydrogen molecules, (collectable) resulting in liquid methanol/petrol/av-gas substitute.
And talking about hydrogen, utilising solar thermal heat, abundant sea water, and catalytically cracking the water molecule in older, solid state technology, we ought to be able to create copious and endlessly available hydrogen, for just a few cents per cubic metre.
We listen to the merchants of doom and gloom; and or, peak oil predictions, at our financial peril.
Almost every vehicle, ship or plane, currently plying our highways, byways, railways, seaways and airways, runs on an algae sourced product!
Some algae are up to 60% oil and growing it/extracting it, as a ready to use product, is virtual child's play!
If anyone believes that the extremely powerful, four trillion plus PA, fossil fuel industry, with its political reach or influence? Is going to sit still, while much cheaper alternatives are developed, they have to have rocks in theirs heads?
Rhrosty.

A succinct appraisal of the irrepressible, egregious and ever wrong, Erlich. Thank you. You'd think the man would own up to his folly. Erlich, I think, appeals to those who consider themselves progressive and whose ideological views cannot be altered by evidence. Many Greens fit into this category. They wear their pessimism as a badge of honour, always hoping for (or creating in the case of climate) impending doom to prove them right. I am reminded of the following quote from Matt Ridley in The Rational Optimist: "My disagreement is mostly with reactionaries of all political colours: blue ones who dislike cultural change, red ones who dislike economic change and green ones who dislike technological change.” Hear, hear.

Curmudgeon

If it's not too late for you to read this. I apologise for my hasty terminology regarding the "millions killed in wars over land disputes." It should really have read IN wars and land disputes because wars are nearly always directly or indirectly started in relation to land ,even if the excuse is religious or access to resources or even a considered superior culture.

Some statistics can be obtained here -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic_disasters_by_death_toll

You will see the millions that died from wars and indiscriminate killing since 1967

Paul Ehrlich and quite a few others who were saying the same sorts of thing around 1967 were wrong about global collapse because they could not predict the success of the Green Revolution, since agricultural production was the really important limiting factor at the time. Even the agronomist William Paddock was caught out. In 1967 India was a net importer of food, already had large numbers of malnourished people, and had a population growth rate that was set to double the population in 30 years. It hardly took a giant leap of the imagination to predict trouble. As for the Ehrlich-Simon bet, Ehrlich's only problem was his timing. If it had run to the present day, he would have won. "An equally weighted portfolio of the five commodities is now higher in real terms than the average of their prices back in 1980 (see chart)".

http://www.economist.com/node/21525472

Now we are facing a wide range of different environmental and resource problems, according to the consensus of scientists in different fields from climatology to geohydrology, to soil science, even with much of the present population living in dire poverty (and we are going to get 2 or 3 billion more just from demographic momentum). We have been staving off declines in living standards by going into environmental overshoot, using up renewable resources faster than they can be replenished. When an aquifer is pumped dry, the water is gone. It is like Cohenite living it up while he runs through an inheritance or lottery winnings. Eventually the money will be gone. See

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/images/uploads/Ecological_Footprint_Atlas_2010.pdf

The Cornucopians have to either assume, with no evidence, that the world's scientific community is part of some vast conspiracy and lying to them about global warming, depleted aquifers, extinctions, deaths from pollution, etc. to introduce "socialism by stealth" or the like, or that a large number of technological solutions with no undesirable side effects are going to magically turn up in time to save us.

Divergence says:

"As for the Ehrlich-Simon bet, Ehrlich's only problem was his timing. If it had run to the present day, he would have won."

Yes, well timing is everything; if Erhlich can hang around to the heat death of the universe he is bound to be on a winner.

Commodity price rises occur for reasons other than scarcity; oil prices for instance can be and are controlled by cartel collusion; the scarcity can also be a product of the time it takes to develop new projects and pass the hindrance of green tape.

The Earth is awash with energy sources; you would have to be [ideologically] blind not to see that.

As for the old canard of population growth; population is, religious influence aside, determined by education, prosperity and emancipation of women. Those things depend on cheap energy, a free society and technology.

By doomsaying, objecting to 'unnatural' energy sources and attempting to limit prosperity and restrict freedoms those who advocate population control are creating the very problem they complain about.

That is a special sort of stupidity.

Ehrlich and his ilk are essentially Luddites who suffer from Future Shock; as I say, they are little people who project their own fears and shortcomings onto the rest of humanity.

It is not, as Divergence speciously says, about "living it up", it is about being forced to live it down to satisfy the irrational and childish fears of a group of people who have far too much influence, self-regard and far too little foresight and regard for the rest of humanity.

Cohenite,

The issue isn't just energy, but the fact that there are many ways in which humans are having a negative impact on the environment. These problems can't be fixed by just one technological solution, as in the case of the Green Revolution. What looks like a good solution to problem A can also sometimes make problem E worse. This paper by Rockstroem et al. from Nature identifies 9 different planetary thresholds relating to different environmental issues that define "a safe operating space for humanity".

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html

open version: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/

This second paper discusses the risks of crossing thresholds and tipping systems to a new stable state.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11018.html

Note that these papers are from Nature, probably the most respected peer-reviewed science journal in the world. If a scientist started making pronouncements in your own area of expertise, you would most likely proclaim him to be an idiot, and quite rightly too. Yet you feel free to go around saying that scientists who have been working in these areas for most of their lives either don't know what they are talking about or are liars. What basis for those opinions do you have apart from wishful thinking?

Yes, some greenies can fairly be called Luddites. I'm not one of them. I am in favour of nuclear power, genetic engineering, and any other technologies that have been properly tested. Some of them are likely to be desperately needed to avert collapse. Nor do I feel any guilt about having a decent standard of living or obligation to move over for people who have overpopulated, apart from eliminating senseless waste.

With respect to population control, foreign countries will have to make these decisions for themselves. Australia's fertility rate is not a problem, and population growth in Australia is only an issue because our growthist politicians are overriding the wishes of the majority of the population to suit their business mates and running an enormous mass migration program, at a rate that will double our population every 43 years.

"What basis for those opinions do you have apart from wishful thinking?"

The history of "Tipping Point" alarmism, the butterfly effect, The Venus Syndrone etc is amusing.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/laugh-riot-190-year-climate-tipping-point-issued-despite-fact-that-un-began-10-year-climate-tipping-point-in-1989.html

There have been "Tipping Points" in paleoclimatic history; they are known as Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) events; they can be serious:

http://rivernet.ncsu.edu/courselocker/PaleoClimate/Bond%20et%20al.,%201997%20Millenial%20Scale%20Holocene%20Change.pdf

But they have nothing to do with AGW since CO2 levels at the time of previous OD events was both high and low.

The fact is humans are incapable of affecting this planet to any great scale; an interesting comparison is between the Torino Scale which is used to measure the energy impact of asteroids and meteorites and that of the combined nuclear arsenal of the world; that arsenal has an energy capacity of about 50,000 megatonnes; the asteroid which got rid of the dinosaurs had an energy capacity of about 100 million megatonnes; that strike basically set the world on fire and evaporated the top 100 meters of the ocean.

5 years later the 'winter' created by that strike had disappeared.

Nature dwarfs what humanity can do and does; in this respect the AGW alarmism is all ego.

In terms of how the environment is going I prefer Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist, a monumental analysis of the state of the ark. I think things have got better in the 10 years since that was written, in pollution terms because the Russian communist block has finally lost the vast polluting factories and the world's worst polluter, Saddam has been hung:

http://jennifermarohasy.com/2008/12/ten-worst-man-made-disasters/

It is good to know that other posters on this site are on notice for being offensive, which I am. I have certainly have been especially in my strident criticisms of the Papal circus and Christianity altogether.

I have never found Geoff of Perth's comments offensive. They are usually quite forceful, passionate and always interesting to read. At least he is prepared to argue his case. Like me, Geoff has no time for the simplistic sophistries pedalled by the IPA.

That having been said one of the principal movers and shakers for the Club of Rome report was Ervin Laszlo. His Wiki site tells us that he is a man of many talents and interests. Probably a bit far out for many of the regular readers of Online Opinion. A bit of a challenge to their one-dimensional world view.