Can you offer evidence for this claim?
You haven’t been reading honestly. I’ve provided plenty of evidence, both excerpted here and linked to. If you bothered to read any of it, you would see that many of those articles refer to others or other discoveries, as well as discussing the vast potential still unexplored.
Arandur, you are an ill-tempered, uncharitable character, and your ad hominem attacks on people suggest either that you are unacquainted with the virtue of Christian charity, or that you are reluctant to practice it.
I’ve always linked what it is in your behavior that leads me to the conclusions of your dishonesty and your agenda. Those are valid arguments, and in part such chastisement is meant to convict you and provoke you to actually read, do some research, be honest, make sensible arguments.
Nevertheless, that personal flaw doesn’t excuse you from the obligation of substantiating your argument that there are no practical constraints on human numbers. I await your provision of evidence that oil and other resources are virtually limitless, or that a population of seven billion Homo sapiens can long be sustained after we cross over the peak of oil production.
First of all, the burden of evidence is on the one that wants to drastically impose upon human freedom; counter the Church’s life-promoting, providential, human-dignifying dogmas; and lend credence to death-centered beliefs and policies in an attempt to reduce human population.
Second, I never said that there are “no practical constraints on human numbers.” I have clearly stated many times that current technologies can support larger human populations sustainably, not that current technologies can support limitless populations. I have also stated with confidence in well-established trends, history, human ingenuity, and Divine Providence that most “constraints” as you call them on human population can be overcome over time, allowing mankind to responsibly expand beyond what current technologies, even if optimally utilized, can support.
Third, I have not said that oil and other resources are strictly limitless, but that the current known availability of their supply is generally quite sufficient to provide for us until we can switch over predominately to alternatives. And more reserves will be discovered. I have provided plenty of evidence for all of these from reputable sources.
Fourth, I’m not the only one here who has pointed out your unreasoned acceptance of the peak oil bogeyman and how this phantom is not what you think it is. Fundamentally, peak oil describes a price problem, not a problem of the available quantity of oil. It is caused in large part by governments, not by economics. It is a principle improperly extrapolated from a single-field oil depletion phenomenon to a world supply across multiple reserves and advancing technologies and reserve exploration–it is taken out of context far beyond the scope of its original observance. It also ignores basic economics (which I suggest you become better acquainted with), whereby we know that as prices increase, investment to generate more supply increases, including generation through alternatives. There is a demand reduction as well, mostly accomplished through efficiency and turning to alternatives.
US daily oil consumption =-19,498,000 barrels
US annual oil consumption = 7.116 billion barrels
Alaska oil reserves = 7.7 billion barrels
Alaska oil reserves = 1+ year supply for the US
If Alaskan oil reserves were all we had to fall back on, yes, we’d have a problem. But we’ve got Gulf reserves, offshore Pacific reserves, oil sands in Canada, oil shale in the West, and then there are tons of reserves off of Cuba, in Brazil and South and Central America, in Africa, in the Arctic Circle, in Siberia and Russia, and likely more elsewhere.
I believe current estimates of oil shale alone are in the multiple TRillions of barrels, amounting to hundreds of years of current U.S. consumption, many, many decades of trend-projected world consumption.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale
“Estimates of global deposits range from 2.8 trillion to 3.3 trillion barrels (450 × 109 to 520 × 109 m3) of recoverable oil.[2][3][4][5]”
That alone, just as with the FAO food links I provided, conclusively demonstrates that quantity of these resources is not a problem. Distribution, regional supply, and price all fluctuate and can be sources of hardship, but this is true of any resource in any time or place; such flux is normal and to be expected. I’ve said that a couple times before, too.
