Wind Generator fails.

[The Natural Philosopher]

because if you dont, you will be dead.

We do in this country.

Oh, sorry, that would mean giving the third world a leg

No. we cant afford it. Anymore than anyone has ever given us a leg up historically.

I have an advantage: I've lived in Africa, and did the sums, because I used to think like you.

At best one could give about 1% a leg up, because to try and give 100% a leg up would mean everyone in the mud instead. Too heavy a load to heft.

Its where liberal socialism and Band Aid falls flat on its face: The reality is that what is actually required is education, of the very few its possible to realistically educate. And if you can manage it, a benign dictatorship.

Howevr its all academic now, because all but te richest countries are goind to see populatin crahes shortly: tehre is a liomit to psustaniable populatin, and we are over it.

Chaos mathematics has been applied to population density, and shows in all species, up to 10:1 peak to trough variation. Expect 90% of the worlds population to be dead in 150 years.

Staring quite shortly.

Now identify the 10% you are going to save.

[Andy Champ]

While I think there may well be a crash I don't agree with the way you got your timescales. When was the last crash? Black Death? And that wouldn't affect us now the same way it did then. Our current risks are pollution and energy exhaustion, and they have never before been an issue on a global scale - so you cannot draw comparisons with earlier humans, never mind other species.

Andy

[Dave Liquorice]

I wouldn't be surprised if the global population didn't crash within

50 years let alone 150. If we last that long without it we probably won't crash, there will be a significant reduction say to 50% of current population level but not a crash down to 10%.

You are forgetting food and water. The lack of water is becoming a serious problem in quite a few places and I don't mean places that have just "not had any rain recently". Many ground water reserves are being consumed faster than they are being replenished.

Is it the WHO that expect that food production will have to double in the next 40 years to feed the worlds population? Who ever it is that is a pretty demanding target. Soylent Green any one?

[tony sayer]

Cue the entry stage left of the Three horseman of the Apocalypse;!...

[The Natural Philosopher]

Y'knmow, a smart person 2000 odd years ago, could have looked at the Romans, and thought 'this efficiency and mechanisation, and rule and law and general civilisation stuff, is going to mean more people, more stuff, more trade., more shit, and where will it all end?

I think I'll write a disaster movie, and call it Revelations'

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember The Natural Philosopher saying something like:

Thank f*ck for that, I say.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Mike saying something like:

Priceless, isn't it? Huge going on about free speech, earlier.

LOL!

[djc]

I am reading "The Inheritance of Rome A History of Europe from 400 to 1000" by Christopher Wickham. A little political misjudgement and the grain supplies from North Africa could no longer be relied on to feed Rome. No longer the tax base from empire to support a central civil administration; so the elite prefer a military career to the civil service, and holding land rather than civic office...

[The Natural Philosopher]

there are some chilling parallels.

between then, and now.