Paying $3 a gallon for gas right now... maybe this is why.

but I still think "Peak Oil" is a humbug.

that boondoggles such as synthetic fuels, ethanol and now "cap and trade" are the direct result of people believing the Peak Oil nonsense?

Even if Dr. Hubbert was proved too early in his prophecy, a 6-8 year margin of error is still a pretty good shot at being a prophet

No it's not! It stinks! It's an indication that he was horribly wrong and needs to reexamine his premise.

Just saying that if things go as they are now, it will get worse.

Anyway, I thought you were against using energy efficiently? According to you oil wlll never run out, so what does it matter?

Mrk

that I think is unfounded. Extrapolating the obvious has led to many a false prediction. Malthus springs to mind.

by 1900.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/graham_stewart/article4743968.ece

At this point, Jevons maintained, the economy would literally run out of steam, reducing Britons to a medieval standard of living. The cost of shipping coal from elsewhere in the world would be prohibitive and, in any case, the leading geologists calculated that other countries would quickly exhaust their stocks as well.

?I draw the conclusion that I think anyone would draw,? wrote Jevons, ?that we cannot long maintain our present rate of increase of consumption.? John Stuart Mill agreed, announcing that his ?treatment of the subject was almost exhaustive?. William Ewart Gladstone was so impressed that he devoted a large section of his famous Budget Speech of 1866 to the findings of Jevons.

Jevons foresaw a conservative party arguing for lower growth to conserve the Earth's scarce resources while a liberal party would preach unrestricted expansion in the vague hope that something might turn up.

And, of course, what Jevons did not factor into his calculations was that something did turn up - oil. Nor did he question that received geological opinion about world coal stocks left underground was wrong by a factor of centuries.

but who is to say he wasn't right?

It's only because of increased food production that we are not starving. I leave out at this point the billions across the world who do not have enough to eat.

So, using the known facts of the day, may be he was right with his calculations.

You keep on about how 'other forms of energy' will take over. At this present time I see no other forms of energy taking over from oil, nor any suggestion that any other form of energy is ready to take over.

May be something will. I don't know. I keep thinking, "may be we will discover faster than light space travel", but I haven't seen any evidence of that yet, and I'm no betting on it at the moment.

Mark

No, he was wrong. If his prediction had been right the western world would have starved to death decades ago.

It's only because of increased food production that we are not starving.

That is my point. He predicted food production would not keep up to population growth. He was wrong.

There are plenty of other energy sources. Coal and nuclear, for example are ready to go now. With a little technological advance solar and wind may become feasible. Geothermal is already in use in some parts of the world. The reason we rely so heavily on oil is that it is the most efficient (cost effective) form of energy available right now and probably will be for some time to come, but there are plenty of alternatives.

and that's the ONLY world?

a simple analogy:
up until August 2006, Pluto was a planet...

would you say that anyone who called Pluto a
planet "pre-August 2006" was 'wrong'?

i certainly hope not, because according to the
"facts of the day" it WAS a planet

,.

Two entirely different situations which are in no way comparable. No matter what the perception, either something happened or it did not. A fact is a fact, regardless of the opinions of the day.

"No matter what the perception, either something happened or it did not. A fact is a fact, regardless of the opinions of the day."

Perhaps true, but to say that someone 'failed to take into account" something or other before they happened is completely inappropriate.

So by Ed's logic, Newton erred with his "3 Laws of Motion" because he failed to take into account Einstein's theory of relativity, proposed over a century later?

Ridiculous.

Mark

Whether Pluto is a planet or not is a matter of classification, not fact. By the standards of yesteryear, which were very loose, Pluto was classified as a planet. By today's stricter standards, it is now classified as a dwarf planet. Pluto itself did not change.

Newton WAS wrong (incomplete), but within the limits of the mechanical world in which we live, his laws apply.

Malthus made certain predictions which did not come true. Therefore he was wrong.

"Your" essence was that this person, (keep forgetting his name because in reality it matters little to me and I don't use him as any reference), was that he failed miserably with his predictions because he failed to take into account future developments, and so he is discredited.

You're wrong.

Mark

that I be wrong on this, so let's stipulate that I am wrong. Satisfied?

I AM impressed that you've gone to never having heard of Malthus before in your life to now being an expert on the accuracy of his predictions.


"but still it moves"

Malthus knew about advances in agriculture, but he discounted them because he didn't think they would ever have a significant enough impact to counter the increase in population.

It's not a matter of he failed miserably with his predictions because he failed to take into account future developments. That would be like saying that he didn't predict the future because he didn't know what would happen in the future. Duh! His failure was that he misunderstood the relation between food production and population, which was his entire thesis.

IMO, it was a failure of imagination. He just didn't appreciate what people were capable of doing.

I guess etc. includes resources/money? (to purchase/develop the more advanced agricultural techniques)

Was he wrong?

Mark, did you read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World? If so, do you remember "Malthusian belt" and "Malthusian drill"?

Some familiarity with Malthus would be expected in most basic economic or technical curricula so I am surprised you are not already familiar with his work. Regardless, the question of whether Malthus was 'right' or 'wrong' boils down to a philosophical or possibly semantic question. I don't want to get into that debate.

IMCO, it is perfectly clear that Malthus made an incorrect assumption. All predictions of Malthusian disaster that I have seen were incorrect because all of them made an assumption that technological change would not create sufficient change in the growth of resources required for the desired outcome. In Malthus' case IIRC he estimated agricultural/food production required to support growing population based on an assumption of linear growth in food production vs geometric growth of population. The Club of Rome in the 70s predicted a Malthusian disaster (in Limits to Growth - which was required reading in my economics classes) based on oil scarcity, again predicating their conclusions on lack of adequate technological progress.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe
Malthus' predictions were clearly wrong, at least at that time, because they were predicated on invalid assumptions about growth in food production. I don't recall whether or not Malthus himself entertained that possibility when he made his predictions. I'll leave it to you to decide whether that means Malthus made an error.

The more important question, of course, is whether technology will continue to overcome growth limiting resource shortages as some in this forum believe, or whether the pessimists are correct when they believe a-la-Malthus that a resource crisis is inevitably approaching.

I think it is patently silly to suppose that technology will not mitigate resource shortages to some degree, but it is arguably unwise to assume that technology will always overcome all resource constraints. It seems to me that a middle way should be found that promotes conservation while simultaneously looking for technological breakthroughs.

FWIW: I think the same policy logic is relevant regarding climate science. I don't understand climatology/meteorology well enough to comment on the (lack of) merits of the science on either side, but I am quite convinced that conservation makes sense as a goal whether or not there is a looming crisis and that technological developments will substantially determine what is possible regarding reduction of carbon footprint. I am a bit concerned that efforts to reduce carbon footprint will fall victim to the 'tragedy of the commons' and I have no idea how to alter that.

#Some familiarity with Malthus would be expected in most basic economic or technical curricula so I am surprised you are not already familiar with his work.#

is Mark an economist or some kind of technician?

from the little i do know of Malthus, i would say that the Dust Bowl and the potato famine proved that he was right in many things he said

,.

The mere existence of famine does not prove Malthus right. The Dust Bowl and potato famine were not caused by population increase, but by other additional factors.

Malthus should be known to all educated people, not just economists. It's kind of disturbing that he's not.

It seems likely that we could clone meat and vegetable/plant materials in factories very soon if needed. That would free us from dependence on the soil and all its limitations.

Looking further ahead, it's not out of the realm of possibility that food could be synthesized out of raw chemicals. That would mean that as long as there are carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms and a few other elements there would always be food.

As far as determining whether Malthus was right or not, under a Malthusian theory, as population increases the amount of food (calories/capita) should slowly decrease. In reality it has increased in Western (and many other) nations. A prediction only has to fail once to be wrong.

In contrast, Newton and Kepler's work can be used to reliably predict what bodies will do in motion. NASA uses them every day with a high degree of precision. Newton's predictions are correct every time.

Einstein's work does not contradict Newton, rather he supplements it. A car going 60 MPH is affected by relativity, but the effects are so infinitesimal that they can't be measured without sophisticated equipment.

I agree that Malthus should be at least mentioned in schools. I am kind of shocked that MarkFlax never heard of him. BTW, I was not saying that everything Malthus thought or said was wrong or worthless. He contributed a lot and was a great thinker.

Malthus was clearly wrong regarding the expected short term disaster. That is not the same as being proved wrong in the long term. Although you are correct that there are various potential technical solutions to problems of food scarcity, none of those is a sufficiently mature technology to address long term needs. I suspect the technologies will mature and current barriers to food and energy production will be overcome. I don't KNOW that they will be overcome. There is a difference.

I don't think Malthus' failure to accurately predict a short term disaster disproves the underlying concepts at all. It just shows that Malthus underestimated our ability to apply technology to agriculture, as you pointed out. Unfortunately, it does not necessarily follow that we will continue to be successful in using technology to increase food yield.

One of my biggest concerns in this regard is that something will happen to disrupt the technical progress that has permitted food production to grow as rapidly as it has. It does not require a great deal of imagination to picture any number of catastrophes that could do this. The catastrophes could be natural (eg: change in climate, rapidly spreading disease, ...) or man-made (eg: a result of terrorism or biowarfare) or political (eg: banning of useful technology). I'm sure it would not take too long to come up with other possibilities.

One example of a biological threat involves the Cavendish banana.
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-06/can-fruit-be-saved
It is true that if the Cavendish becomes extinct it will not be the end of bananas as we know them and even if we lost all bananas it would not create mass starvation but the case of the threatened banana illustrates just one of the threats to food production. Future threats may not be quite so limited in their impact.