Well Stuart thank you very much, it's never too much to acknowledge the work thoroughly done by the drummers. Not only for the quality of the stuff you guys post, but also for the time and effort you invest in it - priceless for us mere mortals, that can't afford to do it.
When I was in the 9th grade my Geography teacher give us this table with world population figures since 1500 and ask us to plot it in a blank sheet. Amazing! That line suddenly went out of the paper!
Later we studied the problems of ageing population in Europe, and the efforts governments where doing in changing that (like subsidies that afford for a woman with more than 2 kids to leave work). Wait a minute! Where will that line go? What appends outside the paper sheet?
By then oil was a very frail word to me, and peak wasn't in my dictionary. Things are much clear now. Population is a key variable in the Peak Oil issue, demographic growth has fed on Oil, and consequently pushed Oil consumption. That's the reason of the hyper-exponential growth where the growth rate also growths exponentially.  
As long we have population growth, we have Oil demand growth, simply because we feed on Oil. I don't know where this will lead us, but we surely have a time bomb in our hands.
Stuart please continue this analysis, try to give us an insight on the Easter Island.