Friday, January 05, 2007

The Doomslayer - a must read

Have you ever heard of Julian Simon?

He died a few years ago - a great loss to anyone who cares about truth and the environment. Simon made a career out of proving the environmental doomsayers wrong with provable empirical data.

I first heard of him through an article in Wired Magazine back in 1977. The article is as relevant today as it was then - in fact more so, because of the recent near-hysteria of global warming alarmism.

Go read it. I guarantee it will change how you view things.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now that Newhouse/Conde Nast/The Oregonian owns Wired Magazine you'll never read about Julian Simon in that publication ever again!

Anonymous said...

When Democrats rule the problem is global warming. When Republicans rule the problem is global cooling. This way the media keeps up a war against the environment that is unwinnable but gets lots of politicians re-elected.

Note: in 1975, Newsweek was hot about global cooling.

(On October 23, 2006, Newsweek issued a correction, over 31 years after the original article, stating that it had been "so spectacularly wrong about the near-term future" (although editor Jerry Adler claimed that the article was not "inaccurate" in a journalistic sense))

Jim Karlock said...

There is actually a logical fallacy in Malthus’ statement:

"Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second."

Raw materials increase with a cubic law function as we learn to dig deeper. We can extract raw materials all the way down to where the temperature is too hot to deal with.

As to peak oil, that probably means a supply of oil for many hundreds of years!

As to:
Note: in 1975, Newsweek was hot about global cooling.

Also see: http://www.saveportland.com/Climate/index.html

Thanks
JK

Unknown said...

Just another round earth nut. When will you communists, socialists, and eco-malthusians admit that capitlism is saving the planet.

If it was up to your kind we would be selectively breading, artificially starving, and avoiding any type of technology that might upset the status quo. (Notice that your kind in charge would have squelched the internet, cell-phones, copiers and printers because they would be to dangerous for a common individual to use).

Capitalism is the only source of innovation of any note in history that has improved the standard of living and quality of life of the general populace of the planet earth. If you really want to save the planet from climate change the last people I would trust to be able to pull it off are Stalin, Castro, Mao, or Guevera.

History is a much better ally to capatilism. We don't require revisionism or ownership of the media to make our case.

Oh yeah one last thing.

When in doubt I tend to side with the economic system that doesn't use genocide as a key implementation strategy. Talk about social equity all you want. You can't be very noble when secret police and fear are required to make the system work.

Speedmaster said...

That's really a great article. Julian Simon was a brilliant man. I wrote this earlier in the year.
http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/quick-book-review-its-getting-better.html