It's the same old despirate rational only with a different ribbon;

"I have not died yet, therefore I probably never will"

but we only know that they were at least 20-30 years too early.

Which parts? From one perspective, they were already too late. The momentum in the system (population growth etc.) might have already been extremely difficult if not impossible to change. Technically, yes, we might have been able to slow down population growth had we started in 1970. But in reality people are very protective of their "right" to have to children and they get quite testy even in casual conversation about it.

It would have taken a global police state to change the population trajectory, most likely.

Another way of looking at this is that if we hadn't started steering the ship a different direction by 1950 (or earlier) and teaching the whole world why resource consumption would eventually be a problem, it was too late. It's even worse because the reality is that people were talking about this back then but nobody believed them.

I think it's time for an appeal to authority:

Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends. There are some things we don't want to know. Important things.
-- Ned Flanders

You can make up whatever you want to help yourself believe.

Have you actually read Malthus? If you had you would know that he was making an argument not based on time, but on the limitations of agriculture. Did agricultural land expand? Yes, and he discussed that. Did yields rise? Yes, and he discussed that. The one place that Malthus came up short was in his imagination of scale. He wasn't capable of envisioning either agriculture or population on the scale that has been accomplished. It doesn't change the logic of the underlying argument.

The significant improvement over Malthus made by the Club of Rome and other writers of the time, was that they did indeed start to include expansion of production and reserves into the model. Ah, but if you'd actually read them, you'd know this.

That's simply untrue. We had a president telling us that we would use up all proven reserves of oil in the next ten years.

And you're going to provide the reference, right? I think you'll find that difficult.

As for Ehrlich, I was not defending him, just pointing out that he "modified" his views given the other work going on. But I believe the figures you are sighting come from TPB, not TEoA. But it has been more than 30 years since I read it. (On a side note, Ehrlich's exagerations in TPB led Harry Harrison to pen an imaginative "science fiction" novel called "Make Room, Make Room." That novel would later be turned into the classic sci-fi movie "Soylent Green" staring Charlton Heston. So, no matter what else we might say of Ehrlich, he was, at least, a contributor to one of the more amusing films of the seventies.)

I cited Malthus above...

In fact you did not cite Malthus. You only mentioned his name as if providing proof of your assertion. I'm curious, have you ever read Malthus, or Ehrlich? Or are you merely repeating neo-classical economics talking points?

Even if these authors, or others who wrote about limits, may have erred in certain predictions, in fact their models - what they projected as process and consequences - have borne out fairly well.

One simple piece of evidence that we have actually exceeded the natural limits of human population/consumption is the alarming decrease in bio-diversity over the last one hundred years, a decrease that has been accelerating of late. Though the details as to why this is occurring, such as habitat destruction, may be complex, in the limit it is human presence and by-products that are at fault. Biomass remains essentially stable over the millennia. Species change, but the proportion of biomass given to any species should look relatively stable from century to century. Mankind now represents a significant fraction of the total biomass, having appropriated the resources that other species needed to thrive. Some may argue that that is mankind's right and destiny! But I wonder how humans will feel about a world devoid of bio-diversity?

Of course, if you are ideologically driven you will no doubt believe you can have your cake and eat it too. So you may end up being completely surprised when the crash occurs. "No one (I pay attention to) could have predicted this..." will flow from the mouths of ideologues.

Question Everything

George

The potato famine in ireland resulted in mass starvation because British policies were informed by Malthus' work... and they assumed that many had to die off because Ireland was overpopulated.

P.P. The potato famine in Ireland may have been exacerbated by political and economic underpinnings but make no mistake about it: The potato famine was due to overpopulation and mono-cropping followed by a predictable sweepstakes event.

The proximate cause of famine was a potato disease commonly known as late blight.

Although blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, the impact and human cost in Ireland – where a third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for food – was exacerbated by a host of political, social and economic factors which remain the subject of historical debate.

The political and economic policies that led up to the Irish Famine took centuries. When the blight wiped out the staple of the poor Catholics of Ireland:

...a calamitous period of starvation, disease and mass emigration between 1845 and 1852 during which the population of Ireland was reduced by 20 to 25 percent.

If you're looking to disprove Malthus or Club of Rome predictions The Irish Potato Famine is not going to support your case.

Joe