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.