An interesting array of responses. I have a few problems with King's toryism at times but in this case he has done his research, interviewed primary sources and caught the anti-pops napping. Their reponses have been incoherent at best. My favourite was the justification of infanticide.

The anti-pops come direct from sociobiology and the far right ideological baggage of that position suffocates their arguments. I think most people believe cutting carbon emissions is necessary. Culling people is not.

Bernie Masters: "I was taught there is more gold in one cubic mile of seawater than has ever been mined from the ground."

It would be nice if it was true. But it isn't, and it's disappointing to see a geologist quote such myths. I guess it is to be expected of a politician pushing his pet ideology. So forgive me - I am sure the geologist in you knows everything I am about to say, but bullsh1ting pollies must be exposed for what they are.

There is 0.000011 ppm (parts per million) of gold in seawater. http://www.seafriends.org.nz/oceano/seawater.htm There can be 2 ppm left in gold tailings http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS202047+06-May-2009+MW20090506 Wikipedia says it 0.5 ppm can be commercially viable. In any case 0.000011 ppm is right out. This is true even if you removed the water from sea water. The gold concentration in the remaining salts is still an abysmal 0.0004 ppm.

That aside, at 0.000011 ppm, there is 46Kg of gold in a cubic mile of sea water. The world produces 2500 tonnes of gold in one year. http://www.goldsheetlinks.com/production2.htm God knows how much has "ever been mined from the ground".

Interestingly, from that graph we have hit peak gold. http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1145804580.php Fortunately unlike oil, we recycle almost all of our gold so it isn't likely to effect us that much.

It is a pity you were full of it. I would really, really have liked you to be right. Not so much for Gold, but as an answer to peak Phosphorus.

Bernie Masters.
I think you had better look for another source of information for the amount of gold in the tailings of a modern gold mine. At Tennant Creek way back in the sixties our head grade was 4 pennyweights per tonne (about 6 ppm) and the tailings was virtually nil, using cyanide extraction. Your figures probably apply to an old stamp mill using mercury, technology has improved since then.

David

No doubt there will still be plenty of fossil fuels left in the ground, but will the energy returned over energy invested make it worthwhile to extract them?

The more immediate worries globally relate to arable land and fresh water, as the aquifers under the world's biggest grain growing areas in North China, North India, and parts of the US, which are essential for irrigating crops, are being pumped dry faster than they are being recharged, if they are being recharged at all. The world has consumed more grain than was being grown for 6 of the past 9 years, world food stocks are at the lowest level in more than 50 years, and last year there were food riots in 34 countries. See Lester Brown's article in the May Scientific American and his book, which goes into greater detail and has references to the relevant government documents and research papers

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=civilization-food-shortages&sc=WR_20090428

http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB3/index.htm

Cornucopians like Bernie Masters forget that there have been plenty of collapses of past societies. In Europe, conditions actually got worse for ordinary people from 1400 to the 19th century (despite great technological progress) as evidenced by both real wages (scroll down to graphs)

http://www.ata.boun.edu.tr/faculty/sevket%20pamuk/publications/pamuk-black_death-final.pdf

and average heights

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/medimen.htm

Sure, global population growth is slowing, but the global fertility rate (~2.8) is still above replacement (~2.33, globally), and the UN has just had to revise its low growth population projection upwards. We are adding about 70 million people a year. Given that we are coping so badly with the 6.7 billion people we have now, why will 9 billion make it any better?

"All groups practiced population control either by infanticide or other means ... Population control is extremely important in a positive way for society."

Oh, for the Good Old Days, eh neillium? Back when if a new baby was just one mouth too many to feed, maybe deformed, or just a bit funny looking, or mostly just if it was a girl, the tribal witch-doctor would order it to be left out on the hillside at night for the local predators. Them was the days!

"Gawd, I miss the screamin'" - Argus Filch, "Harry Potter & the Philosopher's Stone".

Sancho, your allusion to the 2008 food crisis is a typical tactic of the Malthusians: Pick up on temporary blip in the data, and screech, "See! See! Finally we're going to be right!"

What you ignore is the highly unusual synergy that led to the temporary spike in food prices last year. "Analysts attributed the price rises to a 'perfect storm'": droughts in several key grain producing areas, a (likewise temporary) spike in oil prices, the Global Financial Crisis, etc.

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

Another key factor was that several food growing areas had switched to biofuel producing crops: In other words, people in the developing world starved so that elite green idealists in the West could feel better about driving their cars. Nice.

Unfortunately for the Malthusians, food prices have dropped again - as they always have. "Although some commentators have argued that this food crisis stems from unprecedented global population growth, others point out that world population growth rates have dropped dramatically since the 1980s, and grain availability has continued to outpace population."

Oops.

As Peter Cook said, "Well, it's not quite the conflagration I'd been banking on. Never mind, lads, same time tomorrow... we must get a winner one day."

Wing Ah Ling “Down with speciescentric arrogance!!

Equal rights for shower mould and windshield bugs!!”

Ah at last a quotable quote… love it..

more please

Clownfish… whilst I did not envisage a diet of soylent green, we do both seem to be viewing the hysteria with distance and the benefit which comes from standing atop a hill made of dead losers.

Kartiya Jim “Col will quickly call a meeting of the Elders and determine that a one child policy is mandatory .”

Actually I walk the talk …

I have a very simple philosophy.. breed but breed within ones personal economic capacity.

I stopped producing kids before I needed the government to help me out or where we could not live on my income alone (which, whilst more than average, was not infinitely elastic)..

I planned the birth of both my daughters.

I had a vasectomy after the second.

Before you try to criticize my attitude, I suggest you first check out my behavior.

If people managed their family commitments to live within their means and aspirations, we would see an immediate drop in populations… that might cause a problem for those who rely on a constantly expanding population to manage their perceptions of economics but who cares…

Better a small well developed population, where all can experience a good quality of life, than the milling hordes which seem to teem out of the under-developed world and all living in little more than a charnel house or deprivation and poverty.