The Ultimate Resource...

...with thanks to Slattsnews...Part 3. Part 2 was written by the late, great doomslayer Julian Simon, who argued that human ingenuity would guarantee increasing prosperity and development (as long as totalitarian control kept its hand off the tiller.) Taking up this theme is Matt Ridley of The Australian...

...POLLYANNA is a fool; Cassandra was wise. As a self-proclaimed "rational optimist" who argues that the world has been getting better for most people and that the future is likely to be better still, I am up against a deep prejudice towards pessimism that dominates the intelligentsia. As John Stuart Mill put it, "not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage". What is more, pessimism has become a hallmark of the Left, chiefly because it justifies activism... Today, infected by Malthusian ecology, the Left relentlessly preaches millennial doom and technological risk: the climate is heading for catastrophe; resources are running out; population is growing too fast; farming cannot keep up; habitat is being destroyed; poverty, hunger, pollution, disease and greed are only going to get worse. A dramatic change in human stewardship of the planet is needed...The evidence suggests that these predictions are likely to be wrong. Based on the trajectory of the past five decades, and even (or especially) if the world economy grows rapidly, this century is likely to see mild climate change, cheap and abundant resources, falling population, ample food, more wilderness, and the average person becoming gradually - though erratically - wealthier, healthier, happier, cleverer, cleaner, freer, kinder, more peaceful and more equal. Each of the past five decades has almost certainly seen records set for each of those adjectives for the world as a whole. Yet the pessimism monster is irrepressible...Read the full article here... and by the way...
...The Japanese recent, 3/11 Tohohu earthquake, ... left Tokyo with 5 minutes of noisy shaking and virtually no damage in the world’s most high-tech city. See more here...

...and I just couldn't go past this from the UK Telegraph's James Delingpole...The Man Made Global Warming industry is a crock, a scam on an epic scale, fed by the world’s biggest outbreak of mass hysteria, stoked by politicians dying for an excuse to impose more tax and regulation on us while being seen to “care” about an issue of pressing urgency, fuelled by the shrill lies and tear-jerking propaganda of activists possessed of no understanding of the real world other than a chippy instinctive hatred of capitalism, given a veneer of scientific respectability by post-normal scientists who believe their job is to behave like politicians rather than dispassionate seekers-after-truth, cheered on by rent-seeking businesses, financed by the EU, the UN and the charitable foundations of the guilt-ridden rich, and promoted at every turn by schoolteachers, college lecturers, organic muesli packets, Walkers crisps, the BBC, CNBC, Al Gore, the Prince Of Wales, David Suzuki, the British Antarctic Survey, Barack Obama, David Cameron and Knut – the late, dyslexic-challenging, baby polar bear, formerly of Berlin Zoo...