Notes on "doomsday models".

I would like to state, briefly and bluntly, why I think the various "Doomsday Models" are worthless as science and as guides to public policy. I hope it will not be deduced that I believe the problems of population control, environmental degradation, and resource exhaustion to be unimportant, or that I think an adequate response to them is a vague confidence that something will turn up. They are important problems and, for that very reason, public policy had better be based on sound and careful analysis. I do not think that the global models under discussion provide even the beginnings of that kind of foundation. What follows are some of my reasons.