More Than a Hint of Malthus . . .

. . . contemplating the runaway Global Warming (true believers always capitalize the term) crowd, I'm getting the sense that they have more than a hint of Thomas Malthus in them.

When it comes down to it, Malthus was saying the wrong kind of people were having the wrong kind of babies in the wrong kind of places, and that as a mercy to them and the misery that would be caused for all of humanity, they must be stopped.

When it comes down to it, the Albertus Goracles of the world are saying that the wrong kind of people are using the wrong kind of energy in the wrong kind of places, and that as a mercy to Gaia, we must cripple the global economy to prevent the profligate wealthy lifestyle enjoyed by folks in the USA, Canada, Japan, and Europe from spreading any further.

What they have in common is a hatred of humanity (in the guise of a deep desire to 'save' humanity), a distrust of technology, and a blind certainty that things now are as they will ever be.

Also, both Malthus, and the Gaiaists have made leaps of illogic based on incomplete data and dismiss contradictory evidence.

Wikipedia isn't always reliable, and certainly their Global Warming entry presents its conclusions with more authority than they deserve (and leaves out most criticism over the degree that human influence can be blamed). But on Malthus I have less reason to believe they are misrepresenting him, his supporters, or his critics.

Hot-button political issues I guess become less controversial after a century or two.

How ridiculous the current Global Warming madness will seem from 200 years hence won't be known until then.

Will they have only been harmless human hating cranks who were just finding an excuse to feel superior to those around them?

Or will they get control of the economies of a few major countries and send the global economy into a global depression that creates an order of magnitude more misery than even their most alarmist predictions regarding the effects of warming could cause?

Time will tell, in the mean time, stories like this one (via Tim Blair) are still good for a laugh.

Also, these folks are the only honest environmentalist.

And this list of 20 Ways the World Could End has 19 ways other than Global Warming that could lead to human extinction.

I think we're more resilient than that, about the only ones that could effectively get rid of us would be the total loss of atmosphere or the whole planet being sundered apart. Beyond that, we'll innovate our way around any of the worst case scenarios and share whatever space we have left with the cockroaches and rats.