Thursday, August 18, 2005

Today's Dutch Treat
I know that when I want a sober analysis of environmental matters I turn to the Dutch, how about you?  This Drudge ballyhooed story [World running out of time for oil alternatives]  -- why the f**k else would anyone pay attention to this drivel unless he promoted it? -- is a good example of  lib think.  How's this for wretched rhetorical excess?
"If we run out of fossil fuels -- by the time the oil price hits 100 dollars or plus, people will be screaming for alternatives, but whether they will be available at that moment of time -- that's my biggest worry," Hoff said.
I'm immediately reminded of Thomas Malthus, and a delicious irony.  His "Malthusian theory" has been a favorite of  leftist doomsters since at least the 1960's when Magna Cum Idiot  Paul Erhlich published The Population Bomb.   Malthus ( 1766 – 1834)  postulated that "population if unchecked increases at a geometric rate (i.e. 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, etc.) whereas the food supply grows at an arithmetic rate (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, etc.)"  This theory fits nicely with the liberal's  belief that there are finite limits on everything (i.e. - every dollar you earn is one less dollar I can have).  Unfortunately, there is no penalty for being on the politically correct side of a bad idea, so when Ehrlich's predicted world famine failed to materialize during the 1970's, he simply switched to banging on the "global cooling" drum.  Anyway, the irony.

Malthus further hypothesized that his geometric growth in demand would  be curtailed by war, famine and pestilence.  So why worry?  Survivors will  be back to .29¢ gas soon enough, eh wot?  And. we won't have to utilize any of the thousand alternatives being developed as we speak. 

3 comments:

  1. More interest in Malthus? Try "New Ideas from Dead Economists" by Todd G. Buchholz. A very good primer for those without deep saturation in economic theory.

    --OregonGuy

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  2. The Germans pioneered it, synthetic oil, let's fire up those ovens and get to cracking some liberal oil. I see a limitless supply.

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  3. Correcto mundo .. the lesson of the past 12 million years is that in times of need, free societies always come up with solutions. Always.

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