@hightor,
I fully agree. Phosphorus is an element, and, like others, it cannot increase in quantity on the planet. Its widespread use, like that of the so called rare earth elements (though Phosphorus is immensely far more abundant than any of them), is causing their easily accessed concentrations to be more widely dispersed across the earth. That, however doesn't mean they can't be recovered after use. We will likely find economical ways to do that long before the easy sources run out.
Again we have seen claims, many from prominent and (usually undeservedly) credible and authoritative sources for peak coal, peak fissionable materials, peak natural gas, numerous claims for peak metals of all kinds, and many other things as well, all of which have been proven false. All have ignored the possibility of new technologies and substitutions readily achievable once the economic need sets them into motion. The only really interesting thing here is the the otherwise intelligent people who create and sustain them. The endurance of these follies almost always involves the self interest of academics and agencies created to "study the forthcoming crisis" : such agencies have no interest in losing their sources of income and social prominence, as the OECD, IEA and even IPCC have amply demonstrated.
Again there are verifiable scientific principles behind much of this, as I indicated with the logistics equation. and the observable fact that in nature, (apart perhaps from supernova explosions), there are no continuing exponential growth patterns - side effects and the response of other parts of the process/environment involved end up limiting that growth, leading to a new quasi equilibrium. The fact that intelligent people who should know better are themselves subject to such follies ( and sometimes self-serving deceptions) is amply confirmed in human history.
You mentioned CO2 induced warming. That too is subject to these limitations. Carbon is removed from the atmosphere by green plants which use it as a building material, and by the oceans which absorb it as carbonic acid which eventually combines with abundant calcium to form limestone in the ocean depths ( and there's a lot of that beneath the oceans), and provide material for the shells of living creatures. An increase in the carbon concentration in the atmosphere leads directly to increased absorption by green plants and the oceans. A couple of years ago, embarrassed because its short term temperature forecasts were regularly not met by an uncooperative planet, the IPCC admitted that they had not taken into account the accelerated growth (and accumulation) of green plants in their models and had also adjusted the assumed 10m depth of the oceanic mixing layer (an incredibly small estimate), thereby underestimating the oceanic absorption as well. Unfortunately for them their consensus forecasts still remain persistently high.
Nothing new here, the follies of academics and scientists in pursuing (sometimes motivated by self-interest) conventional theories favored by the then ruling hierarchies are as old as the history of science. In addition, in today's environment, professors get their papers published and tenure if they support currently fashionable theories such as AGW, and they are ignored if they don't.
The truth is often found between the contending parties. A good friend, Prof Robert Mueller, a physicist at Cal Berkeley, has a lot of personal experience with this. He is the one who led the exhaustive statistical analysis of numerous potential sources that finally established the superior correlation of the observed warming with atmospheric CO2. He started out as a so called "denier", when in fact he was just interested in the real science. He is also well aware of the fudging of the (scanty) 19th century data done apparently to magnify the 20th century warming, and of the continuing biases built into the IPCC models. He, along with many other prominent scientists acknowledges warming is occurring, but at a much lower rate than the IPCC suggests (one witch which we can easily cope ) and more importantly that the claims of a "hockey stick" acceleration is mere self-serving fantasy ( again the logistics principle applies here as well.) . Unlike many of the others Mueller is frank and open about it.
Human nature is what it is and is common to us all. Think about the wide variety of nonsensical political proposals out there, put forward by both liberals and conservatives, and the tempests that attend them. This is not unique to politics - it occurs in every field of human endeavor, including science.
