Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on October 7, 2016
Malthus the prophet of doom: why bother with reading the original when you can simply cut and paste from the Internet?
The demolition of Thomas Malthus’ work in our times is often based on accusing him of having predicted some awful catastrophe to occur in the near future, sometimes on a specific date. Then, since the catastrophe didn’t occur, there follows that Malthus was completely wrong and nothing in his work can be salvaged. It is a well-tested method that was used with great success against “The Limits to Growth”, the report to the Club of Rome that appeared in 1972.
Except that Malthus never made the “wrong predictions” attributed to him, just as “The Limits to Growth” never made wrong predictions, either. There are no specific dates in Malthus’ book “An essay on the Principle of Population” for where and when famines or other catastrophes should take place. For instance, Malthus says that,
Famine seems to be the last, the most dreadful resource of nature. The power of population is so superior to the power in the Earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction; and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague, advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and ten thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world.
— Malthus T.R. 1798. An Essay on the Principle of Population. Chapter 7, p 44
Doomerish, you can surely say, but not something that you can define as a “wrong prediction”. Events similar to Malthus’ description really occurred before Malthus times and in the “Essay” he normally refers to historical cases, especially those that had occurred in China.
So, Malthus was not babbling about dark and dire things to come; he was describing and analyzing events that were well known in his times. But few people, today, seem to be interested in looking up the original text and prefer to maintain that “Malthus was wrong” by repeating the legend. And, by the way, even if Malthus had been guilty of “wrong predictions”, that doesn’t mean that infinite population growth could take place on a finite planet.
The other way to demolish Malthus’s ideas is to paint him as evil, in the sense that he had proposed, or favored, mass extermination as a consequence of his ideas. This is, also, a common legend and also a great injustice done to Malthus. Over the great corpus written by Malthus, it is perfectly possible to find parts that we find objectionable today, especially in his description of “primitive” people whom he calls “wretched”. In this respect, Malthus was a man of his times and that was the prevalent opinion of Europeans in regard to non-Europeans (and maybe, in some cases, still is, as described in the book “Can Non-Europeans Think?” (Dabashi and Mignolo 2015).
Apart from that, Malthus’ writings are clearly the work of a compassionate man who saw a future that he didn’t like but that he felt was his duty to describe. Surely, there is no justification in criticizing him for things that he never said, as it can be done by cutting and pasting fragments of his work and interpreting them out of context. For instance, Joel Mokyr in his otherwise excellent book titled “Why Ireland Starved” (Mokyr 1983) reports this sentence from a letter that Malthus wrote to his friend David Ricardo,
The land in Ireland is infinitely more peopled than in England; and to give full effect to the natural resources of the country, a great part of the population should be swept from the soil.
Clearly, this sentence gives the impression that Malthus was advocating the extermination of the Irish. But the actual sentence that Malthus wrote reads, rather (Ricardo 2005) (emphasis added):
The land in Ireland is infinitely more peopled than in England; and to give full effect to the natural resources of the country, a great part of the population should be swept from the soil into large manufacturing and commercial Towns.
So, you see that Malthus wasn’t proposing to kill anyone, rather, he was proposing the industrialization of Ireland in order to create prosperity in the country. Nevertheless, legends spread easily on the web and you can see the truncated sentence by Malthus repeated over and over to demonstrate that Malthus was an evil person who proposed the extermination of the poor. I can’t think that Professor Mokyr truncated this phrase himself, but he was at least careless in cutting and pasting something that he read on the Web without worrying too much about verifying the original source.
The Web, indeed, is full of insults against Malthus. You can find an especially nasty (and misinformed one) attack against him at this link where you can read that, yes, the Irish famine was all a fault of Malthus who misinformed the British government, who then refused to help the poor Irish, who then starved – all based on that truncated sentence.
Sometimes, I have the feeling that we are swimming in propaganda, drinking propaganda, eating propaganda, and even being happy about doing that.
21 Comments on "Malthus the prophet of doom: why bother with reading the original when you can simply cut and paste from the Internet?"
Anonymous on Fri, 7th Oct 2016 4:14 pm
“:why bother with reading the original when you can simply cut and paste from the Internet?”
An worthy observation. In a similar vein, why actually learn anything(or know anything at all) when you can be a google expert inside of 20 mins, or with a few clicks of a mouse.
Right boaty?
penury on Fri, 7th Oct 2016 8:41 pm
I think that one of the problems is the short attention span at least of the homo sapiens of the U.S. If anything which is predicted to happen,has not happened within a short time span, well as far as they are concerned it never will happen and the prediction is wrong. If the change has not happened in mt lifetime, then it is obvious that it will never occur.
makati1 on Fri, 7th Oct 2016 8:59 pm
Penury, your observation is correct and will be forgotten by the Americans who read it soon after. IF they even bother to read it.
Some put my forecast of collapse down as it has not happened yet, so it will never happen, or it will be so far in the future as to not matter. I just shake my head and again see examples of why the US failed. Stupidity, ignorance, sloth and greed.
Boat on Fri, 7th Oct 2016 9:37 pm
penury on Fri, 7th Oct 2016 8:41 pm
makati1 on Fri, 7th Oct 2016 8:59 pm
Exactly penry, this American thinks eminent collapse should have happen soon. I read hundreds of links and thousands of comments saying very soon. After 3 long years turns out I have a short attention span. lol Turns out I’m stupid, sloth and greedy for goodness sake. The only failed thing that happened was your ability to forecast collapse.
GregT on Fri, 7th Oct 2016 10:00 pm
“After 3 long years turns out I have a short attention span.”
Three years is not a long time Boat, and it’s rather difficult to have an attention span, when you choose to be ignorant of reality.
Sissyfuss on Fri, 7th Oct 2016 10:03 pm
Boat’s right, I have to admit. He is stupid, sloth-like and greedy. Who knew?
JuanP on Fri, 7th Oct 2016 10:32 pm
I’ve read MLthus’ “An essay on the principle of population” many times in my life. I read it for the first time when I was in my early teens. I have always considered myself a Malthusian. As far as I am concerned Malthus was a genius. It is very sad to think that most people in the world today can’t understand what he understood more than 200 years ago. This lack of understanding of very basic facts is one of the main reasons why I think human animals are completely hopeless. We will never stop destroying the Earth’s biosphere because it is in our nature to do it. My understanding of this is what led me to having a Vasectomy instead of children. I find people’s ignorance, stupidity, selfishness, and arrogance very hard to accept.
Fred on Sat, 8th Oct 2016 4:57 am
“We will never stop destroying the Earth’s biosphere because it is in our nature to do it.”
Is it “in our nature”? Or have our minds been programmed to think that way?
http://peakoil.com/consumption/capitalism-and-degrowth
Cloud9 on Sat, 8th Oct 2016 6:59 am
We are all finite boys and girls. Protect your family. Do a kindness for a neighbor. Enjoy the sunset.
Davy on Sat, 8th Oct 2016 6:59 am
Malthusian tries to put a human touch on what is normal and natural for nature. Extinction and evolution are the frequencies of life. This reality influenced by geologic acquiescence and by the nature of life itself. Geology destroys and allows life. Life strives to grow but it also succeeds in destroying itself. It is a balance and nature operates around a balance. Entropy ensures a system can never attain perfection because of chaos and mutations. We have successions and climax of growing systems inanimate or animate.
If we hairless apes think we are different that is because we have a large brain which is clearly an evolutionary end. If we would not have found ways to burn off the rich store of hydrocarbons quickly and efficiently some other life form would have. Cyanobacteria managed to do the same destructive trick humans did by its ability to break water and release oxygen and cause what we think was a snowball earth.
What would it matter if an earth killing asteroid was approaching within a decade? Tell me how that would differ from what we are doing? You can’t because all you can argue is human nature and there is not explanation for human nature other than it is part of nature. You may be one of those exceptionalist who think humans are separate and distinct and because of this possess some kind of divine attribute of free choice and responsibility. That is just more bullshit that got us here. We are no better than yeast and no worse we just think we are because of a large brain that has an ego and this ego thinks it is real. Knowledge is part of the universe. Human knowledge is just a part of that somewhere way down the ladder.
Apneaman on Sat, 8th Oct 2016 10:51 am
Cloud9, best advice ever.
Fred on Sat, 8th Oct 2016 3:14 pm
Davy, are you saying that since ultimately the sun will destroy the Earth or that perhaps an asteroid will before that time, it does not matter what we “hairless apes” do?
You could be right but you too can’t prove that ethics and morality, care for each other and the Earth do not matter at all.
Of course life and death are two sides of the same coin. I think it matters what choices we make while we’re on the “life” side even if at some point in time all that’s left of this planet is stardust.
Davy on Sat, 8th Oct 2016 3:24 pm
Nope Fred, what I am saying is we want to believe we are exceptions to the rule and we are not.
Anonymous on Sun, 9th Oct 2016 3:11 am
But you and all your fellow muricants, ARE exceptional. Never forget that. Or at least, never forget to let everyone know how exceptional y’all are down there in crackerland.
makati1 on Sun, 9th Oct 2016 6:16 am
Anon, yep! Exceptionally: fat, ignorant, immoral, uneducated, arrogant, corrupt, greedy, and unfamiliar with the real world outside the US or even what is going on in their own country.
Did I miss any ‘exceptionalisms’?
Davy on Sun, 9th Oct 2016 7:08 am
Anonymous, go back downstairs and play your Xbox. Big boys talk about intelligent things up here.
Dredd on Sun, 9th Oct 2016 9:30 am
“Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.” Mark Twain
Apneaman on Sun, 9th Oct 2016 12:41 pm
Been great fun watching the MSM and denier O sphere trip over themselves to NOT make the obvious Hurricane connections to AGW.
Most of the warming (96%) has gone into the oceans and hurricanes feed off that energy.
More atmospheric moisture (7%) due to increasing evaporation courtesy of AGW means more rain.
Sea level rise due to melting glaciers and ice caps and thermal expansion results in greater storm surges, courtesy of AGW.
AGW, we don’t make things, we make things worse.
This is all high school level physics. Tragically these hurricanes and storms will only get bigger and more powerful. Unimaginably powerful.
Hurricane Matthew Pounds Southeast With Record Storm Surge, Massive Flash Flooding
“Five tide gauges with long-term historical records along this stretch of coast set all-time records on Friday through Sunday for their highest water level (also called the storm tide, or the water level measured relative to high tide, MHHW): ”
“More high storm surges coming to SC, NC”
“Record atmospheric moisture contributing to Matthew’s deluge”
“Matthew was the 13th billion-dollar disaster in the U.S. this year”
https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/hurricane-matthew-pounds-southeast-with-record-storm-surge-massive-fl
As long as the denial remains, TPTB will continue to use taxpayer money to rebuild doomed infrastructure. The biggest waste is the beachfront stuff. Watch how many rich beachfront property people get bailed out again.
Apneaman on Sun, 9th Oct 2016 4:40 pm
“Hurricane Truthers” Sure that Mathew a Hoax
“Hours ahead of Hurricane Matthews’ landfall on Florida’s Atlantic coast, some climate change skeptics downplayed the danger of what meteorologists say could be the worst such storm since Hurricane Katrina.”
“Yet in the face of those pleas conservative aggregator Matt Drudge, who has a house in Florida, tweeted that “The deplorables are starting to wonder if govt has been lying to them about Hurricane Matthew intensity to make exaggerated point on climate,” and “Hurricane Center has monopoly on data. No way of verifying claims. Nassau ground observations DID NOT match statements! 165mph gusts? WHERE?”
Drudge later posted the web address of a NOAA buoy and encouraged readers to monitor the storm on their own, to see if “observations match the Hurricane Center’s claimed 140 mph sustained winds.””
https://climatecrocks.com/2016/10/06/hurricane-truthers-sure-that-mathew-a-hoax/
Hurricane Matthew has now killed 19 people in the US; record floods in North Carolina
http://www.vox.com/2016/10/9/13217634/hurricane-matthew-floods-north-carolina
Hmmm, I wonder if any of those 19 dead folks are dead because they believed what Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the denier-O-sphere were telling them. I wonder if many folks in the path of the destruction never bothered to batten down the hatches”” so to speak and now have more damage to their property than they otherwise would have if they hadn’t listened to those ideological alarmist fools. Seems like a handful of conservatard superstars might be responsible for as much death and destruction as the AGW jacked hurricane. Oh well, when one volunteers to have their brain consistently spoon feed a false tribal version of reality from fat retard junkie radio personalities and bloggers there will be consequences. Fine by me.
BTW, it’s not the survival of the fittest, that’s econ 101 speak. It’s those who are most adaptable who survive and it’s pretty near an impossibility to adapt to something you believe is a hoax. No worries, because adapting to our new abnormal climate and biosphere is really just a matter of who will survive the longest – everyone will be going.
STRANDED FAMILIES: ‘WE’RE SCARED. WE WISH WE HADN’T STAYED’
“Officials say people who refused to evacuate from central Florida’s Atlantic coast are calling for help now as Hurricane Matthew’s western eyewall brushes past Cape Canaveral.”
“Mandatory evacuation orders had been issued for 90,000 people living on barrier islands and in mobile homes and low-lying areas. Waters says some residents who refused to leave now find themselves cut off as they face the worst of the hurricane.
He says a family called in that the roof “just flew off their home on Merritt Island.”
http://live.tampabay.com/Event/2016_hurricane_season/396082766
Seems like quite a few were listening to Matt, Rush et al. Wa wa wa wa HELP us Big Gov Help!
One day there will be no one coming. Can’t afford these ever growing big Gov rescues forever.
Apneaman on Sun, 9th Oct 2016 5:07 pm
Matthew Flings All-Time Surge and Rainfall Records Across Southeast
https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/matthew-flings-alltime-surge-and-rainfall-records-across-southeast
makati1 on Sun, 9th Oct 2016 7:21 pm
For those who care:
https://earth.nullschool.net/
I watched Matthew for weeks as it formed and moved across the Atlantic. There is another one forming. Nothing in the Pacific at the moment.