Billions Will Die. We will win.

Posted by A. Windaus on November 07, 2006, 04:45 PM | #

Yes, take the irony of the Iraq war is that Saddam was found guilty for ordering the execution of 170-something people, yet over 100 people are now dying a day in the Iraqi civil war.

So in only two days, more people have died than what Saddam was sentenced to death for - one must wonder if leaving Saddam in power might have been the better option.

Posted by James Bowery on November 07, 2006, 06:16 PM | #

Mr. Renner is referring, of course, to the Malthusian Dilemma about which we have some superficial disagreements—primarily about not the inevitability but the necessary urgency of the Dilemma.

I think maybe hundreds of millions will have to die prematurely, within the next century, before the current con-artist Zeitgeist is replaced by more rational means of managing population—means that do not put zero-sum thinking people in power over the keys to civilization and that do not commit de facto genocide against the kind of people most capable of sustaining human population.

However, even this isn’t necessary if more rational machines can supplant human fools before the die off.

However, ultimately, it would appear that populations tend to expand without some sort of limiting powers with the foresight to prevent dysgenic growth.  It isn’t at all clear to me we win within such a power struggle.  Atomization, of people within individualistic groups, etc. can cause profound differentials in death rates between groups favoring more clannish and more hypocritical groups.

Posted by Melba Peachtoast on November 07, 2006, 07:03 PM | #

“It isn’t at all clear to me we win within such a power struggle. “

Perhaps - oh, I am only a homely lady from the Outback, and these topics put me in a tizzy—but I shall try to go on—perhaps this Renner fellow means not that “our” success is preordained but that if it comes then the adoption of certain slogans and beliefs will have been a necessary condition of victory.

Waltz that, Matilda.

Posted by Matilda on November 07, 2006, 07:29 PM | #

One problem with Griffinite ‘peak oil’ scenarios and the like is that when the collapse of the present energy-drenched ‘culture’ occurs, western nations will be stuck with large numbers of third world peoples, and would - if the Griffinite scenarios come to pass - be without the technological means to repatriate these masses back to their homelands, at least in a timely, efficient manner - or to have them leave ‘voluntarily’, with ‘encouragement.’

Now is the time to do it, when the same transportation technologies that brought them here exist to remove them.  If the present energy-technology bubble pops with present demographics in place we may be left only with more unpleasant alternatives left to deal with intra-state ethnic competition.

Of course, billions may die due to disease brought on by globalism or population overshoot even if energy usage is maintained or expanded.

Tie me kangaroo down, mate, tie me kangaroo down.

Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on November 07, 2006, 11:13 PM | #

Don’t predictions of collapse carry with them prediction of the collapse of strong central authority (biggest friend to the minority)?

Posted by Søren Renner on November 08, 2006, 10:19 AM | #

See? You do understand!

Posted by Fred Scrooby on November 26, 2006, 04:03 AM | #

Dennis Mangan in an entry posted today thinks peak oil is real, it is inevitable, BUT it will come later rather than sooner and we’ll have a soft landing thanks to development of alternatives:

“PEAK OIL” IS STILL GARBAGE

In case you missed it, about a week ago Cambridge Energy Research Associates released a report that once again debunks the Peak Oil theory:  “Peak Oil Theory – ‘World Running Out of Oil Soon’ – Is Faulty; Could Distort Policy & Energy Debate:

”In contrast to a widely discussed theory that world oil production will soon reach a peak and go into sharp decline, a new analysis of the subject by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) finds that the remaining global oil resource base is actually 3.74 trillion barrels—three times as large as the 1.2 trillion barrels estimated by the theory’s proponents—and that the ‘peak oil’ argument is based on faulty analysis which could, if accepted, distort critical policy and investment decisions and cloud the debate over the energy future.”

The global climate change advocates as well as the peak oil folks didn’t like this one bit, and some of them were reduced to casting aspersions on CERA’s integrity. [...]

Obviously, unless there’s something completely unknown (like abiotic oil), the world has to run out at some point. CERA merely thinks that that point is later rather than sooner. As that point comes, and oil becomes higher in price alternative sources of energy will come into play. Even now, alternative energy is the latest Wall Street darling, with stocks in companies that will produce ethanol shooting upwards.

The Peak Oil crowd is confused. Even if they’re correct that oil supplies are on a steep downward decline, they underestimate alternative sources of energy and the power of the profit motive. If oil ran out tomorrow, the world would get over it quickly.

______

” ‘Tan me hide when I’m dead, Fred,
Tan me hide when I’m dead!’
So we tanned his hide when he died, Clyde,
And that’s it hanging on the shed!  All together now,

“Tie me kangaroos down, boys,
Tie me kangaroos down!
Tie me kangaroos down, boys,
Tie me kangaroos down!”

Posted by Fred Scrooby on November 26, 2006, 05:37 AM | #

For any who don’t know the song.  (Have your computer’s sound turned on.)

Posted by Fred Scrooby on December 11, 2006, 06:38 PM | #

Look what this professor of neuroscience expects and recommends in relation, not to peak oil, but to global warming.