By Robert Bradley Jr.
“CO2/climate optimism is merited, not more recalibration by falsified merchants of doom.”
David Carlin must be a worried guy outside of his smiling photos. This “policy, sustainability, and finance expert” has a firm (D. A. Carlin Company) ready to assess your climate/ecology risks for a nice fee. He has the knowledge and answers to the ‘problem’… Or maybe not.
Here is his New Year’s post:
With 2026 beginning, what date would we overshoot the planet’s resources if everyone lived your lifestyle?
Great visualization showing when 100+ countries would exceed a sustainable balance based on the resource use and consumption habits of different nations.
The U.S. and Canada hit their sustainability threshold in March, so maybe North America should just hibernate for three-fourths of the year.
Carlin ends:
It’s the mirror image of how many earths we would need. An earlier overshoot date means that country is borrowing against the future. Needless to say, we cannot borrow forever!🌍
Malthusianism never dies. Paul Ehrlich lives! The neo-Malthusian ‘overshoot’ predictions date back to the 1960s and 1970s with such quotations as:
MIT/Club of Rome (1972)
If all the policies instituted in 1975 in the previous figure are delayed until the year 2000, the equilibrium state is no longer sustainable. Population and industrial capital reach levels high enough to create food and resource shortages before the year 2000.
- Donella Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth (New York: Universe Books, 1972), p. 169.
Although we have many reservations about the approximations and simplifications in the present world model, it has led us to one conclusion that appears to be justified under all the assumptions we have tested so far. The basic behavior mode of the world system is exponential growth of population and capital, followed by collapse.
- Ibid., p. 142.
Limits to Growth … “astonishingly young” (the oldest was 30) authors were true believers. Dennis and Donella Meadows retreated to a New Hampshire farm after completing the book “to learn about homesteading and wait for the coming collapse.” “‘We definitely felt like Cassandras,’ Donella Meadows added, ‘especially as we watched the world react to our work’.”
- Quoted in Robert Bradley, Capitalism at Work: Business, Government, and Energy (2009), p. 234.
And regarding climate change?
“Many people think that the threat of ‘global warming’ arose only towards the end of the twentieth century…. Climate change, either natural or anthropogenic, has been discussed from the classical age onwards, evolving from the expected benefits of climate engineering to today’s fear of global disaster.”
- Hans von Storch and Nico Stehr, “Climate Change in Perspective,” Nature, June 8, 2000, p. 615.
At the moment we cannot predict what the overall climatic results will be of our using the atmosphere as a garbage dump. We do know that very small changes in either direction in the average temperature of the Earth could be very serious. With a few degrees of cooling, a new ice age might be upon us, with rapid and drastic effects on the agricultural productivity of the temperature regions. With a few degrees of heating, the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps would melt, perhaps raising ocean levels 250 feet…. In short, when we pollute, we tamper with the energy balance of the Earth.
- Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (Cutchogue, New York: Buccaneer Books, 1968, 1971), p. 39.
Another ‘overshoot’ is the world racing past the (arbitrary, peculiar) temperature increase of 1.5°C, a baseline for Net Zero policies in the future. The quicker the warming threshold is exceeded, the more angst will follow and new targets set. In the meantime, free markets will adapt to weather/temperature changes with government “climate mitigation” policy causing waste and futility. CO2/climate optimism is merited, not more recalibration by falsified merchants of doom.
Appendix: Related Posts
Alarmism Now – and Then (Modern Malthusianism in its 6th Decade) (May 9, 2024)
Avoiding a Malthusian Future (Richard Fulmer: September 13, 2022)
Malthusianism Reconsidered: Desrochers on Smil (October 22, 2020)
‘McKibben goes McKibben on COVID-19 (Malthusians get ‘dizzy’ about the human scourge) (March 19, 2020)
Halloween: Neo-Malthusian Day (October 31, 2019)
Out of Climate Time … Again (failed Malthusianism rolls on) (May 2, 2017)
‘Fear Not: The Malthusians Are Wrong’ (2000 Op-Ed for Today) (August 3, 2016)
I’m an old man…I find it difficult to overshoot anything…
I’m an old man… and I find it difficult to even hit the target.
More so in the dark of night!
All the more reason to forego solar voltaic and wind turbine electrical generation.
Gotta hand it to Ehrlich who warned of possible warming and cooling disasters due to human activity in the same paragraph. He makes a ton of speaking fees for having predicted outcomes that are polar opposite and managed to get both wrong.
I’m working way too hard for the money I’m making. Ehrlich had a degree, I don’t so I have have to find other ways to make money. Hey, do those Learing Centers franchise?
You could open a Daycare center in Minnesota, or go to California and open an Eldercare Center. I hear there is money to be made in both.
Malthusian idiots can’t give up the game because their personal identities are married to preposterous nonsense that empirical facts unequivocally refute. The loss of their delusions would mean the death of the falsehoods that define them.
Human innovation had led to more abundance of everything as we continue use natures gifts more efficiently.
What fools, Carlin and his ilk are. Without human intelligence and adaptability, we, the offspring of Adam and Eve would have died off millennia ago when we no longer would have been able to reach the fruits growing in the Garden of Eden. Let these fear mongers cower under their synthetic blankets and pillows and starve to death. The rest of us will enjoy the increasingly comfortable weather and food supplies and easily adapt to any problems that may be encountered.
Where’s the Netherlands? And Germany six weeks later than Russia? What utter rubbish.
Netherlands isn’t there and I don’t see Ireland either, so we will all be saved if we all go and live there.
Belgium is April 11, so I’d go with that…or maybe Netherlands is already underwater and no one noticed, like the disappearing glaciers in Montana.
There are limits to how much alarmist claptrap one can stomach.
Apparently there is no limit to how much can be produced.
Yes, the supply is infinite.
Especially when they don’t get called out for the way they predict opposite outcomes resulting from the same supposed “cause,” or the same “outcomes” resulting from opposite “causes.”
See “the children won’t know what snow is (due to global warming)” vs. “heavier snowfalls are ‘consistent with’ global warming”, and “more extreme weather” being the result of BOTH “global cooling” and “global warming.”
Paul Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb” told us the human population was going to increase to the point that there would be huge die-offs as the essentials for life ran short.
It looks like that line of thought is wrong, as populations are starting to see decreases in their numbers and big decreases over the long term. A prediction given the other day was that China’s native population will go from about 1.4 billion to about 450 million over the coming decades.
Paul didn’t see that coming.
This is like the Olympics and Australia is behind USA and Canada in the medal tally so clearly we need to lift our game. We have the resources just not using enough of them to go for gold.
So what would outstanding be Jan 2nd?
Yeah, and what the heck is Mongolia doing?
It has to be difficult to get out of bed every day and only see the gloom and doom of the world as you drink a glass half empty of water. Negative thoughts constantly clouding out everything positive about the fantastic world we live in.
How many Earths would we need to mine if all of our electrical generation came from sunbeams and breezes and all the cars were Teslas?
I totally dismiss the narrative as utter nonsense.
However…
The earth even with abundance has limited resources.
We must conserve, be efficient, be intelligent in how we do things.
The psychosis and neurosis of living in confined spaces such as cities and the proposed 15 minute warrens is something that needs focus. We evolved from swamps, forests, and savannas. We need open spaces.
The list of challenges is not short.
But we need rational, well thought, approaches, not emotional knee jerk reactions.
We need analysis of alternatives.
We need analysis of consequences.
We need science and economics to be “pure.”
We need politicians to be silent or at least be sensible.
Reverend Rodent now relinquishes the soap box.
Only a complete economic illiterate would believe that a doubling of GDP means a doubling of resources used.
A modern computer is 10 times as valuable as one from 10 years ago. Does it consume 10 times the resources In production and operation?
*We* are also far more productive. I believe it used to take over 90% of the US population to provide the food needed. Now it takes 2%.
And the population has multiplied in that time, yet we not only feed the much larger population using a very small relative number of farmers, but we produce all of that food on less land.
The climate idiots want to take us backwards, and ironically call their stupid ideas “sustainable.”
But then, as leftists, one should expect them to describe their ideas as exactly the opposite of what they are.
Take the computer.
One cannot look at just today’s version.
Many people buy a new computer every year or so. Cell phones, too.
Production resources would be 4x-5x of just 1.
Power consumption is up.
I read The Population Bomb in high school, and did a paper on it. I also read Alvin Toffler’s Future
SchlockShock, Silent Spring, Diet For a Small Planet, Stalking the Wild Asparagus, and others. In 1972, my brother and I were homesteading on a parcel of land in the woods of South Weare New Hampshire, living in a teepee. I had forgone college, as my heart wasn’t in it. We were definitely a product of the times, I suppose. There were also stints at various communes or quasi-communes. So, quasi-hippies, I guess, but only for a short while. Then we grew up.I think it takes a special talent to be so wrong about so much. 😉
There’s a name for people with that particular combination of attributes.
Socialists.
“Great visualization showing when 100+ countries would exceed a sustainable balance based on the resource use and consumption habits of different nations.”
“exceed a sustainable balance”
Article needs to define “sustainable balance” but I don’t see anything like that attempted. If there is a fixed amount of a thing (arguable), and once you use it it’s gone (arguable), then there is no use rate other than zero that does not eventually spend 100%. Thus “sustainable” is, by definition, NEVER achievable while time moves forward.
(So what is the point of the graphic? If he wanted to say it’s better to live like an average citizen of Honduras than Switzerland then FffffFFfffFFffffffff that!)
Also:
“Dennis and Donella Meadows retreated to a New Hampshire farm after completing the book “to learn about homesteading and wait for the coming collapse.”
I wonder what they’re thinking today? They published at a time when there was no GMO corn, no microwave oven, no cell phone, no Internet.
“Dennis (b. 1942) and Donella “Dana” Meadows (1941–2001) were influential American environmental scientists and systems analysts known for leading the team that produced the groundbreaking 1972 report The Limits to Growth. Using computer modeling, they demonstrated that unchecked exponential economic and population growth would lead to environmental and resource crises.”
My first thought – How would one “check” economic and population growth? Sounds like something not to write about on the Internet.
Wow. Wikipedia:
“In 2014, research at the University of Melbourne confirmed that the predictions from the book Limits to Growth were largely correct. Presently we are very close to tracking the “business-as-usual” scenario from the book.”
“largely correct”
I don’t know what to say.
That’s bat sh— crazy.
Challenge to anyone without access to a copy: Try to find predictions from the original book. I just spent 15 minutes Googling and found nothing but praise and agreement that they were correct, but no mention of what any of them were. The evidence has been “disappeared”.
They are claiming the now expected stabilization in population has delayed or eliminated the collapse, as predicted.
per AI, these were the predictions:
AI Overview
The Limits to Growth (1972) predicted that if 1970s exponential growth trends in population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continued unchanged, the world would face a sudden, uncontrollable decline in population and industrial capacity within 100 years. The primary scenario anticipated a “business-as-usual” collapse by 2030–2050.
Key predictions and findings included:
The authors argued that stabilizing population and industrial output was necessary to prevent this collapse, a conclusion that was highly controversial but found to largely match real-world data by later researchers.
None of those predictions look like predictions to me.
It looks like the AI wanted to write bullet points to list specific predictions, could not find any that worked out, then wrote parts of the theory instead.
eg:
“Delayed Limits: The study noted that solving one problem (e.g., resource depletion) through technology often just leads to another bottleneck (e.g., pollution). “is not a prediction of anything measurable.
Really? “often just leads to”?
Sorry to over-comment, but the lack of thought is exasperating.
Playing a football game often leads to touchdowns.
sh– man you gotta be kidding me.
Pages on Wikipedia suggest the stay on the “homestead” didn’t last long. Dennis: {“lectured in over 50 countries”} He has been all over spouting this schist.
She died (2001) at 59 of cerebral meningitis.
The Dooms Day Clock wasn’t alarming enough so they came up with a Dooms Day Calendar?
Perhaps it’s time to ask and answer this simple question:
So, how has mankind, in the various nations across Earth, already managed the “alarming” rise and on-going “overshooting” of the 1.5 C increase in global temperature, above the 1850-1900 average temperature, that is asserted to be so tipping-point-critical according to the UN, IPCC and plethora of CAGW organizations?
Answer: well, by doing nothing more than
— publishing a lot of needless communications, some claiming to be scientific,
— holding an uncountable amount of conferences (COPs), symposia, and alarmist presentations,
— slightly increasing the use of air conditioners, but leaving their set-points unchanged,
— spent a LOT of money that would have been better used for the direct benefit of humans around the planet.
My prediction: humans will continue doing the same for the next 1.5 C rise in global temperature, assuming such will ever occur.
I wonder what the results would be if a large segment of the planet’s population were to surveyed after seeing these numbers and asked whether they’d be willing to make any substantial lifestyle changes to help mitigate the supposed looming disaster. Judging by earlier surveys that showed few people consider fighting climate change anywhere close to a top priority the results would be next to no one.