AND ANOTHER THING, PERICLES ...

The massive environmental problems piling up will probably lead to collapse of the human race - at least those problems could be just a bit easier to manage if population growth is slowed down as much as possible, right now. Every billion counts, in fact every million less will be a help. Optimists hope that the sense of this will be seen in time. Pessimists believe that vapid arguments like yours will prevail.

If you insist on equating quantity with quality it is a waste of time trying to change your mind.

Thermoman said, "The Club of Rome was essentially right even if not in some details and only people in total denial can maintain otherwise". The club of Rome was wrong in just about every detail, and Thermoman has the gall to suggest that this is an indicator of being "essentially correct". He then claims that anyone who is unable to ignore all the detailed errors, and see it his way, is in 'total denial'.

Thermoman, I'll bet a hundred bucks that you had a serious hooch habit in your teenage years and that your MRI scans would reveal the brain patterns of a schizophrenic. Don't waste your time, Pericles, this guy's third eye is in the back of his pants.

Now now Perseus, play nice.
The Club of Rome was a quite large group, with some that made more outlandish claims than others. The “Limits To Growth” book received a lot of justified flak for not releasing the methodology of their predictions until 2 years after the book was released. However, that does not disprove their thesis. They ran a variety of models, some of which did not turn out exactly as they predicted, and neither does that disprove their main thesis!

Let’s look at oil. They did the math quite well with the information they had at the time. Sure, they could not know about a few extra discoveries, or the coming political oil crisis that would slow oil demand through a crushing recession. Sure they were out a bit on the oil figures — but does that prove the basic concept that more people using more oil will bring on a crisis earlier?

And let’s LOOK at oil discoveries! Some facts from ABC’s Catalyst.
“The most oil ever discovered was back in 1965.”
“The last year we discovered more oil than we consumed was back in 1981.” “We now burn 2 barrels of oil for every barrel discovered.”
Consumption is catching discovery, and yet hardly anyone cares.
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/

Perseus, would you try and debunk the idea of asteroids EVER hitting the earth just because some concerned scientist thought he saw reason for concern with one comet, but made a slight mathematical error and it went sailing by the earth? Would you then go on to argue that no comets will ever hit the earth again?

Scientists before the 70's oil crisis predicted we would run out of oil about now. It did not happen, therefore it will never happen. “Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc”!

Can I suggest that before you embarrass yourself any further, that you watch ABC’s Catalyst online and get your head around peak oil? Increasing supplies of "cheap oil" are about to become dwindling supplies of vastly more expensive oil. If LTG was "basically" right on oil, what about the other resources Thermoman discussed?

The Club of Rome, Paul Ehrlich, the Paddock brothers, and others who were predicting disaster in the 1960's were being reasonable given the information they had at the time. Ehrlich was spot on about emerging diseases long before AIDS. However, they could not anticipate the success of the Green Revolution. According to an article by Fred Pearce in last week's New Scientist (on the sucking dry of acquifers), we now grow twice as much food as then, but use three times as much water to do it.

Some of you seem to think that if technology has saved us in the past it always will in the future. Unfortunately there are plenty of ruins around the world of past societies where human ingenuity didn't save the day and collapse occurred. (See Jared Diamond's "Collapse" and archaeologist Ronald Wright's "Short History of Progress".) How lucky do you feel?

The ratio is now 6.5 barrels of oil for every one found

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/2/28/21235/1491

Deffeyes now believes Peak Oil has occured. Watch the monthly production figures and see.

Prof. Jared Diamond is carving out his own niche as the 'Jubilation T Cornpone' of the suburban badlands. He starts with a bit of hot (global warming ) gospel, with fire and damnation upon the wages of ecological sin and the pending reckoning of the lost and wayward. All reinforced with a good book bargain (his own) and a little bottle of his patented special remedy, never to be confused, yo hear, with any of that snake oil, and worth every penny.

His grasp of Australian conditions is so rudimentary and illinformed that the reporting of him by the ABC et al borders on treason.