David Attenborough....

chucknorris

What hapened to the Halifax thread, did some huge arguement flare up ending with insults flying, so it was deleted?

System

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Stop posting then. As this is exactly what you spent time doing yourself.

I get enjoyment from trying to help those less fortunate

Graham_Devon

Joeskeppi wrote: »

I get enjoyment from trying to help those less fortunate

Pretty good....

IveSeenTheLight

Graham_Devon wrote: »

So why do we continue to chase pyramid schemes?

Not sure if you missed my post, so wondering if you could answer my query below.

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

Which schemes are you referring to?

N1AK

GeorgeHowell wrote: »

I'm not a mathematician but I thought that if you keep on doubling numbers it represents exponential growth.

You're right; you're not a mathematician and people who don't understand what exponential means should either stick to mathematical terminology they understand like 'getting bigger' or take a few minutes to learn about it.

You can call it insulting and I'm fine with that; personally I find it insulting to have such vacuous nonsense put forth as though it was an informed or accurate point.

N1AK

Jegersmart wrote: »

I am not sure it is necessary to be so hostile. You make a good point, growth has been exponential but has peaked (so far) and has now flattened out to around 1.2% or so.

Future energy projections are slightly different to this though.

Population growth has never been exponential (unless you'd like to show me the mathematical exponent you, or someone else, believes accurately models it). Population growth has also not flattened out (again unless you would care to put forward a credible source) it is clearly decreasing.

The view that population growth was 'hyperbolic' was all the rage 50 years ago. We've had half a decade of evidence, research and analysis that shows that clearly isn't the case.

So someone coming on here and talking about a model that hasn't been credible since my parents were in nappies and pretending it is credible deserves nothing less than a firm rebuttal.

Finally the energy projection based arguments are just a desperate fall-back position adopted when earlier efforts fail. The energy reserves (what I assume you mean by 'available' energy have been decreasing since before human kind existed. The sun is the biggest energy source in our solar system and it has a finite life even if you take a more narrow minded view we have effectively unlimited nuclear energy, based on even massive growth of consumption per capita, if we wish to exploit it. There is also no shortage of gas, oil or coal (though I'd prefer we exploited less of that).

I have no issue with debating population growth, over-population, energy and food risks that they may cause etc however I'm not going to treat arguments that would embarrass a typical A-level student with their ignorance or inaccuracy as being better than they are.

Jegersmart

N1AK wrote: »

Population growth has never been exponential (unless you'd like to show me the mathematical exponent you, or someone else, believes accurately models it). Population growth has also not flattened out (again unless you would care to put forward a credible source) it is clearly decreasing.

The view that population growth was 'hyperbolic' was all the rage 50 years ago. We've had half a decade of evidence, research and analysis that shows that clearly isn't the case.

So someone coming on here and talking about a model that hasn't been credible since my parents were in nappies and pretending it is credible deserves nothing less than a firm rebuttal.

Finally the energy projection based arguments are just a desperate fall-back position adopted when earlier efforts fail. The energy reserves (what I assume you mean by 'available' energy have been decreasing since before human kind existed. The sun is the biggest energy source in our solar system and it has a finite life even if you take a more narrow minded view we have effectively unlimited nuclear energy, based on even massive growth of consumption per capita, if we wish to exploit it. There is also no shortage of gas, oil or coal (though I'd prefer we exploited less of that).

I have no issue with debating population growth, over-population, energy and food risks that they may cause etc however I'm not going to treat arguments that would embarrass a typical A-level student with their ignorance or inaccuracy as being better than they are.

Hi N1AK

Thank you for the in-depth reply, there are several sources showing world population growth over the past couple of thousand years, here is one of them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_curve.svg

from the main page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

You already know this, and have access to Google so let me just reply to other points you have made.

The above 2 links show a graph which has a certain shape. If I compare it to a graph sowing an exponential curve - say here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_function - then I would say they look quite similar. I am however not a mathematician, so I have untrained eye - perhaps you could explain the differences?

One should always question sources, some are credible and some are not. This is however quite subjective as is your opinion as to whether a source is "credible" or not.

You mention your parents' nappies. I don't know old you are but let us assume you are 50 years old, and that your parents are 80 years old. This would mean they were born around 1930-1935, and whilst I am uncertain as to their ability to understand exponential curves at the "nappy age" - I for one certainly did not suggest that population growth has been exponential in the 1950 to present day period - when I make that point I am looking at the last couple of thousand years.

You mention "Population growth has also not flattened out (again unless you would care to put forward a credible source) it is clearly decreasing.". What do you mean by this?

You mention "Finally the energy projection based arguments are just a desperate fall-back position adopted when earlier efforts fail. The energy reserves (what I assume you mean by 'available' energy have been decreasing since before human kind existed. The sun is the biggest energy source in our solar system and it has a finite life even if you take a more narrow minded view we have effectively unlimited nuclear energy, based on even massive growth of consumption per capita, if we wish to exploit it. There is also no shortage of gas, oil or coal (though I'd prefer we exploited less of that)."

Everything you have said in that paragraph is only your opinion, you ask everyone else to provide you links that YOU find credible but when you pluck some opinions out of the air and state them as fact then we should take your word for it? That would seem rather narcissistic and ignorant at best, and plain dumb at worst.

I am not sure you are happy to "debate" these issues, the word debate would seem to be irrelevant to what you are doing in this thread. Whether you are even capable of having a debate on this subject would seem to be undermined by this last post of yours tbh.

It is highly likely in my view that no one really knows what our energy reserves actually are, and no one knows for sure what the future energy requirements will actually be. I guess what we do know is that our dependence on oil and gas is enormous, and if one believes that the reserves are finite then we need to start addressing this now, because the infrastructure and technology required to harness "renewable" energy to replace the dependence on oil and gas will in all likelihood take decades to invest, refine and implement.

I have included the last paragraph purely from the point of trying to find some common ground we may be able to agree on so that a debate can actually take place. Based on your last posts though, it would seem unlikely that you will be able to shelve the naive derision displayed in other posts - but perhaps you can surprise me?

J