Earth calling Geoff of Perth, Earth calling Geoff of Perth ... what the fricken hell are you talking about with the genetic optimism/pessimism thing and how come you got appointed a realist?

Maybe you're a top gun in the sustainable water, drop toilet, renewable, mulching green arm band brigade but you're a long way from your medication pack with your last post.

No need to be so defensive. It's just a simple case that those who support liberalism, capitalism, humanism and western democracy, don't want you and the Unstable Unpopulation whackos depriving people of the right to have kids and pursue freedom and happiness where ever they can find it.

Nor do we want you carrying out sociobiological experiments on the Australian population as if we were rabbits. Yours truly, Bugs Bunny

Cheryl,

Why would we want to stop people from having children? The Australian fertility rate is 1.9, slightly below replacement level, as it has been since 1976. The real problem is the Government's enormous mass migration program, hardly an issue of personal freedom unless you believe in completely open borders.

Rhosty,

You are always coming up with these technological schemes. Once it has been fully proven that they can, say, make the interior of Australia green and fertile, and don't have nasty side effects, we can then talk about increasing the population. Not the other way around. You need to think of the physicist Luis Alvarez, who demonstrated muon catalysed fusion. He initially believed that he had solved all of humanity's energy problems forever, but then found that it was impractical due to the cost of making muons, their instability, and the "alpha sticking problem". I agree with you about recycling nutrients better, but there are always losses.

Jardine,

Our culture is so complex that no one person can understand it all. You accept an argument from authority every time you get into a car or airplane or fill a prescription. You only have a problem if you don't like what the experts are telling you. Scientists get grants, promotions, and respect by coming up with interesting new findings or ideas, or by shooting down the ideas of other scientists. Climatologists would just love a credible argument against AGW, if only to shoot it down, and it would mean a Nobel Prize for the originator if it held up.

There is nothing mystical about consensus, but any statistics book will tell you that you are more likely to get a reliable result with a bigger sample size. Science is also self-correcting, so why not leave it to the experts and do the no regrets items first?

"Climatologists would just love a credible argument against AGW, if only to shoot it down, and it would mean a Nobel Prize for the originator if it held up."

An explanation is only required when there is something to explain; ALL attempts by AGW to describe an abnormality in the current climate which requires a non-natural explanation have failed.

Marcott is the latest shambles.

Given this the pursuit of an AGW based explanation is a waste of time.

One of the best expositions of the sun's climatic dominance is by Stockwell:

http://vixra.org/pdf/1108.0004v1.pdf

Short version:

http://vixra.org/pdf/1108.0032v1.pdf

Yet to be published.

Climatologists do not like a credible argument against AGW because they know they do not have a credible argument in favour of AGW.

Geoff of Perth
Your self-abnegation is commendable piety in one so ostentatiously pious. Still, how do you know you’re not consuming too much and too many natural resources? How do you know you’re not screwing up the planet more than you are morally entitled to? Indeed since, according to you, human life is self-evidently bad for the environment, are you entitled to live at all? Please explain how you you know the appropriate and moral level of consumption for any given person?

Divergence
Who's "we"?

The difference between voluntarily accepting an appeal to absent authority, and having it imposed against one’s will by force, should be obvious. Whether or not the warmists and anti-populationists understand this, it invalidates their entire argument.

You do understand, don’t you, that science cannot tell anyone what the distribution and abundance of species should be, what the temperature of the globe should be, how many people there should be or what their living standard should be, and no government policy is capable of knowing whether it is producing an improvement, even in its own terms, once we take into account the problem of knowing what human values are and should be now and in the future?

“why not leave it to the experts and do the no regrets items first?”

This line of reasoning would only be valid if you could answer my above questions first. You can’t.

You are merely assuming, without any scientific or rational basis for your assumption, that the State can create greater net benefits for society by the use of force – policy - without ever taking into account what knowledge we would need to have in order to know that whether better serves the human values it purports to serve.

You can’t prove the anti-populationist case any more than you, or anyone else can prove that the world faces detrimental AGW that policy can improve.

The idea that “science” justifies the conclusion of the warmists or anti-populationists is simply an irrational belief system.

But if it’s not, then please go ahead and answer my above questions.

Population is more of the same.

There is more of the same robbery by the establishment.

There is more of the same poverty; there is more of the same denial, more of the same advertising for unlimited resources, more of the same consumer sales, more of the same real estate rebounds, more of the same road construction.

It’s just more of the same hollow, pointless, so called progress.

More of the same, management systems the world has relied upon since the late 1940’s are breaking down but more applications of the same failed management approaches are underway. To support more of the same failures there is more of the same moral hazard, more of the same credit provision, more of the same propaganda and lies. There are more of the same breakages with more of the same exponentially increasing consequences. There is more of the same corruption, more of the same outright pillage and government and big business deceit.

There is more of the same indifference and refusal to face reality.
There is more of the same flight out of banking deposits into risky currency traps even as there is more of the same flight into banking deposits!

In the end apparently “the good old days” are just around the corner. At the same time, there is more of the same begging/wishing for more of the same.

With more of the same taking place right now, less of the same will certainly be a whole lot worse.

What is sustainable about any of this? Who knows? How many more of the same vacant buildings are needed before the Chinese get to sustainability heaven?

Cheryl is indifferent in order to ‘have’ her desired industrial goodies and whatever she wants, she just refuses to see what is self-evident.

Our collective future is binary: we are either heading to some unknown utopia or destruction by our short sightedness.

Right now, this is happening and too much fantasy thinking and denial remains in the optimist’s brain.

Anyone want a deck chair on the Titanic?

Reckon you're a paid up member of the pessimists, Geoff of Perth. Nothing I can say will change that. When you open your fridge door, note first you have power and refrigeration and then note all of the nice things you have to eat. I get the feeling you might be a koolgardie safe man but each to their own. If you don't like progress of technology - DONT USE THEM.

When you get sick, don't take the medicines that we and foreigners created; don't drive that car or turn on the air conditioner because all of these things are made by us. But they come at a cost. You are an environmental ascetic and rightly belong to a faction than wants to curtail immigration, meddle with women's fertility and create Fortress Australia. For you, the world is a scary place. For me, it is wonderous.