RE: The End Is Nigh, Again?? (was: Life after the oil crash)

It's not a great mystery why I focussed on energy use at this time: I have a
limited amount of time this morning. I don't think that Tertullian's dire
prediction, or that of Malthus (who, like +Ussher, perhaps should have stuck
to theology!) need to be cited time and time again. OK, they were wrong, in
hindsight, but hindsight is always 20/20. Are current doomsday sayers
wrong? Maybe, but we'll probably never know. Scientists call them as they
see them and that vision is not always 20/20. It may well be that, as some
believe, that the Earth contains huge amounts of abiotic hydrocarbons and
that we simply need to drill deep enough to get them (as Thomas Gold tried
to) or that we will find a way to satisfy all our energy needs by harnessing
the sun's power economically and, not only maintain our [material] standard
of living, but raise that of the developing world to the same level.
However, I would not invest my meagre resources into the drilling for
abiotic hydrocarbons.

Chuck Vandergraaf

  _____

From: janice matchett [mailto:janmatch@earthlink.net]
Sent: Friday, October 28, 2005 10:29 AM
To: Tjalle T Vandergraaf; burgytwo@juno.com; asa@calvin.edu
Cc: glenn_morton@yahoo.com; dfwinterstein@msn.com;
michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk; gmurphy@raex.com; randyisaac@adelphia.net;
igd.strachan@gmail.com; mrb22667@kansas.net; drsyme@cablespeed.com;
dale.k.stalnaker@nasa.gov; panterragroup@mindspring.com;
gregoryarago@yahoo.ca
Subject: RE: The End Is Nigh, Again?? (was: Life after the oil crash)

At 11:11 AM 10/28/2005, Tjalle T Vandergraaf wrote:

Theres too much in Janice Matchetts entry to cover in the limited amount
of time that I have this morning, but let me pick just a few of her
statements pertaining to energy use: Is the end finally nigh? Yes. [snip]
~ Chuck.

### I'm curious as to why you blew off these statements (and instead
decided to stick with the doomsday mantra in your comments):

Such worries about overpopulation and resource scarcity have a long history.

The Roman writer Tertullian warned in 200 A.D. that "we men have actually
become a burden to the earth" and that "the fruits of nature hardly suffice
to support us."

In 1798 the Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus published
<http://www.nationalinterest.org/issues/59/Baileyextr.html> An Essay on the
Principle of Population, in which he claimed that population growth would
always outstrip food supplies, inevitably resulting in famine, pestilence,
and war.

Biologist Paul Ehrlich notoriously updated Malthus gloomy predictions in
his 1968 book <http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/people/paul_ehrlich.html>
The Population Bomb, which predicted that hundreds of millions of people
would die of famine in the 1970s.

~ Janice

 
Received on Fri Oct 28 12:11:05 2005