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Well met then, sir or madam. Malthusians have been predicting gloom and doom for years, and yet, continuously been proven wrong. Anyone who believes otherwise

Well met then, sir or madam. Malthusians have been predicting gloom and doom for years, and yet, continuously been proven wrong. Anyone who believes otherwise has usually just not actually read what Malthus wrote in his books. His main hypothesis has at least been rejected for the time periods concerned, as the food supply has vastly outgrown population growth. Now, that doesn't mean everyone has food, but it does mean that the human population as a whole has an overabundance, quite contrary to what he predicted would happen. http://www.economist.com/node/11374623 http://www.economist.com/node/11374623

pbhjpbhj 14y ago
So population can continue to grow unchecked without stressing resources? Where are you hiding your storehouse of infinite supply?? You're going to be very rich when the fossil fuels run out, oil for plastics becomes a luxury, when heavy metals relied on for batteries and magnets get more scarce, when water tables fall even lower, as helium runs low, ... But no of course more and more people demanding all these things and ever increasing power usage can't possible reduce per capita availability?!?
- ars 14y ago
  The resources are created by the population. Metals are infinitely recyclable. So is water (distribution is the problem, not existence, and distribution can be solved if you have people who need it and are willing to do the work). You don't need oil to make plastic - you can literally make it out of air (although it's harder, all the atoms necessary are in air). All types of energy are more or less interchangeable, If one runs out, switch to a different one. Animals use resources they find. Humans create those resources.
  - meric 14y ago
    Yes but at some point there will be a physical limit. Earth's energy income will always be limited by the Sun's energy output. So no, not infinitely. (I imagine making plastic out of air would take a lot of energy.) Before you tell me how much energy the Earth gets compared to how much we use, I'm going to pre-emptively reply "Exponential growth".
    - ars 14y ago
      > I imagine making plastic out of air would take a lot of energy. Not much more than you are otherwise loosing by using the oil instead of burning it. The hard part is getting carbon - not a lot of CO2 in the air. > I'm going to pre-emptively reply "Exponential growth". But we are not having exponential population growth right now. And even if we were, the universe is big REALLY big, stupendously unimaginably big. Even just the Earth is enormous, and we are nowhere close to filling it up.
      - meric 14y ago
        Yes I know the universe is REALLY BIG but infinity is INFINITELY bigger. I am saying population cannot grow, infinitely. There will be a limit.
        ars 14y ago
        How do you know? No one knows if the universe is infinite or not. And even exponential growth takes time - if it takes longer than the heat death of the universe (assuming a finite universe in both time and space) to fill it up, then it doesn't matter if it's exponential. And to bring things back to this earth, this isn't going to be a problem for such a long time that predicting anything whatsoever about it is futile.
        meric 14y ago
        >> And to bring things back to this earth Let's end this with a Asimov short story. http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html
    - alttag 14y ago
      > Earth's energy income will always be limited by the Sun's energy output. This seems to discount tidal, wind, and geothermal energy sources. Wearable devices that capture kinetic movements are a possibility too. As technology progresses, efficiency increases. While what you're saying seems theoretically possible, it also seems a long way off (perhaps several millennia).
- rubashov 14y ago
  I'm often shocked at how people think history started at some point in the last 200 years. Malthus was completely right and all the historical data we've been able to gather has validated his views, going back tens of thousands of years. The exception is post agricultural revolution, meaning the last 150 years, which might as well be a rounding error. It won't last. Malthus was right: population is limited by food supply and any increase in food supply results ultimately in a higher population with a roughly constant standard of living.
  - kbutler 14y ago
    > Malthus was right: population is limited by food supply and any increase in food supply results ultimately in a higher population with a roughly constant standard of living. That's the funniest thing I've read in a long time. You're asserting that we have roughly the same standard of living as people 200 years ago? 1000 years ago? 10,000 years ago?
    - jvdongen 14y ago
      Well, that kinda depends on how you define standard of living of course. We live very different and longer lives today as opposed to 200 or 1000 years ago. But on a basic day-to-day level, do you think you live a significantly happier and more fulfilling live than a random someone from a 1000 years ago?
      - twoodfin 14y ago
        Yes. This is so indisputably true I wonder how you can possibly think otherwise. Even putting aside what must be something like 30 or 40 years worth of life expectancy at birth, and probably a decade or so of life expectancy as a 20-something, the median inhabitant of Earth a thousand years ago was engaged in backbreaking labor from sunrise to sunset, ate an unvaried, subsistence diet and was almost completely illiterate. The current median inhabitant might be working in a Foxconn factory, but he or she has massive health and lifestyle advantages over his or her 1000 AD counterpart.
cma 14y ago
At current population growth rates (exponential), within 10,000 years the number of human bodies would be expanding faster than our light cone (polynomial).
- nowarninglabel 14y ago
  Population growth is not constant, further more the rate of growth itself has slowed down, and there is nothing to show that the slowdown won't continue, but lots of evidence that it will.

pbhjpbhj 14y ago

So population can continue to grow unchecked without stressing resources? Where are you hiding your storehouse of infinite supply?? You're going to be very rich when the fossil fuels run out, oil for plastics becomes a luxury, when heavy metals relied on for batteries and magnets get more scarce, when water tables fall even lower, as helium runs low, ... But no of course more and more people demanding all these things and ever increasing power usage can't possible reduce per capita availability?!?

ars 14y ago
The resources are created by the population. Metals are infinitely recyclable. So is water (distribution is the problem, not existence, and distribution can be solved if you have people who need it and are willing to do the work). You don't need oil to make plastic - you can literally make it out of air (although it's harder, all the atoms necessary are in air). All types of energy are more or less interchangeable, If one runs out, switch to a different one. Animals use resources they find. Humans create those resources.
- meric 14y ago
  Yes but at some point there will be a physical limit. Earth's energy income will always be limited by the Sun's energy output. So no, not infinitely. (I imagine making plastic out of air would take a lot of energy.) Before you tell me how much energy the Earth gets compared to how much we use, I'm going to pre-emptively reply "Exponential growth".
  - ars 14y ago
    > I imagine making plastic out of air would take a lot of energy. Not much more than you are otherwise loosing by using the oil instead of burning it. The hard part is getting carbon - not a lot of CO2 in the air. > I'm going to pre-emptively reply "Exponential growth". But we are not having exponential population growth right now. And even if we were, the universe is big REALLY big, stupendously unimaginably big. Even just the Earth is enormous, and we are nowhere close to filling it up.
    - meric 14y ago
      Yes I know the universe is REALLY BIG but infinity is INFINITELY bigger. I am saying population cannot grow, infinitely. There will be a limit.
      - ars 14y ago
        How do you know? No one knows if the universe is infinite or not. And even exponential growth takes time - if it takes longer than the heat death of the universe (assuming a finite universe in both time and space) to fill it up, then it doesn't matter if it's exponential. And to bring things back to this earth, this isn't going to be a problem for such a long time that predicting anything whatsoever about it is futile.
        meric 14y ago
        >> And to bring things back to this earth Let's end this with a Asimov short story. http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html
  - alttag 14y ago
    > Earth's energy income will always be limited by the Sun's energy output. This seems to discount tidal, wind, and geothermal energy sources. Wearable devices that capture kinetic movements are a possibility too. As technology progresses, efficiency increases. While what you're saying seems theoretically possible, it also seems a long way off (perhaps several millennia).
rubashov 14y ago
I'm often shocked at how people think history started at some point in the last 200 years. Malthus was completely right and all the historical data we've been able to gather has validated his views, going back tens of thousands of years. The exception is post agricultural revolution, meaning the last 150 years, which might as well be a rounding error. It won't last. Malthus was right: population is limited by food supply and any increase in food supply results ultimately in a higher population with a roughly constant standard of living.
- kbutler 14y ago
  > Malthus was right: population is limited by food supply and any increase in food supply results ultimately in a higher population with a roughly constant standard of living. That's the funniest thing I've read in a long time. You're asserting that we have roughly the same standard of living as people 200 years ago? 1000 years ago? 10,000 years ago?
  - jvdongen 14y ago
    Well, that kinda depends on how you define standard of living of course. We live very different and longer lives today as opposed to 200 or 1000 years ago. But on a basic day-to-day level, do you think you live a significantly happier and more fulfilling live than a random someone from a 1000 years ago?
    - twoodfin 14y ago
      Yes. This is so indisputably true I wonder how you can possibly think otherwise. Even putting aside what must be something like 30 or 40 years worth of life expectancy at birth, and probably a decade or so of life expectancy as a 20-something, the median inhabitant of Earth a thousand years ago was engaged in backbreaking labor from sunrise to sunset, ate an unvaried, subsistence diet and was almost completely illiterate. The current median inhabitant might be working in a Foxconn factory, but he or she has massive health and lifestyle advantages over his or her 1000 AD counterpart.

cma 14y ago

At current population growth rates (exponential), within 10,000 years the number of human bodies would be expanding faster than our light cone (polynomial).

nowarninglabel 14y ago
Population growth is not constant, further more the rate of growth itself has slowed down, and there is nothing to show that the slowdown won't continue, but lots of evidence that it will.