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From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: the defeathering of Malthus
Message-ID: <674@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 6-Feb-84 17:06:08 EST
Article-I.D.: dciem.674
Posted: Mon Feb  6 17:06:08 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 6-Feb-84 17:59:23 EST
References: <2084@watarts.UUCP>
Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 28

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Now, if we substitute our necissarily exponential death rate for 
Mr. Malthus's arithmetic or regular death rate we have a fromula
which subtracts one exponential from another. Any grade 11 student
who has attended one third of her/his math classes will indicate to
you that the result is necessarily a regular or arithmetic function.
Which is to say that the supposedly arithmetic growth of food resources
is entirely adequate for the the arithmetically growing population.
============
I suggest you retake your grade 11 maths exams. The derivative of
an exponential is also an exponential.

Malthus must be right in the end, even if he was unable to foresee
the Green Revolution. An arithmetic increase in food supplies may
be growing faster than an exponential increase in population at some
point in time, but inevitably the exponential catches up in the end.

A further point to consider is that the increase in agricultural
productivity has been in good part due to the provision of non-solar
energy (in the form of fertilizers, fuel for farm machinery and so forth).
The resources to feed this energy into agriculture are rapidly running
down, so it is most unlikely that even an arithmetic increase in
food supply will continue for long.  A drastic decrease is more likely
over the 50-150 year time span.
-- 

Martin Taylor
{allegra,linus,ihnp4,uw-beaver,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt