Fifty Years To Prove Malthus Right
Condensed Matter journal club
Fifty Years To Prove Malthus Right
- Event time: 11:30am
- Event date: 10th January 2014
- Speaker: Professor Graeme Ackland (School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Edinburgh)
- Location: Room 2511, James Clerk Maxwell Building (JCMB) James Clerk Maxwell Building Peter Guthrie Tait Road Edinburgh EH9 3FD GB
Event details
Abstract
A major question confronting sustainability research today is to what extent our planet, with a finite environmental resource base, can accommodate the faster than exponentially growing human population. Although these concerns are generally attributed to Malthus (1766-1834) early attempts to estimate the maximum sustainable population (ergo, the carrying capacity K) were reported by van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) to be at 13 billion people. Since then, the concept of carrying capacity has evolved to accommodate many resource limitations originating from available water, energy, and other ecosystem goods and services.PNAS 110 pages 4161-4162 (2013)
pdf version
'Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind' by Condorcet
pdf version
'An Essay on the Principle of Population' by Malthus
pdf version
Authors
Lynn H. Kaack, Gabriel G. Katul
About Condensed Matter journal club
Given the diversity of research in the CM group, chosen topics vary widely. We tend to stick to high-impact journals - Nature, Science, PNAS and PRL have been popular - but this is not prescriptive..