I never said it was a dead set certainty though, did I? I said "the question is whether he can maintain his recent form". I think it is pretty likely that Ponting will be at the top of his game for another 2-3 years. As I said, I think he is likely to decline as well, but given that Ponting is at his absolute peak right now, I think it's fair to assume that any sort of decline into mediocrity is a little while off yet. It might be five seasons or it might be two, but he certainly hasn't shown any signs of it so far.
As I said in the last post, if we assume that Ponting will continue near his best for another couple of seasons, and that he will eventually decline with age, but continue to play for a couple of seasons at less than his best, then it is easy to assume that he will break the run scoring records. The same, incidentally, goes for Kallis and Dravid. They are slightly less prolific than Ponting at their best, but they are still heavy run scorers, relatively young and not too far off the pace record wise.
As much as it is a fact that all batsmen go through slumps and declines as they get older, it's also true that very few batsmen just give it away immediately when they fall away from their best. Yes, it's short sighted to come out and say "Ponting will score 50 test centuries and make 16,000 runs, because of the pace he's set since 2001", but saying he is a likely candidate to pass Lara and Tendulkar's records certainly isn't.
Anyway, I think most people who are commenting on Ponting at the moment are simply praising his current form. It's worth remembering that we as cricket fanatics are perfectly aware of everything that is happening in the cricket world at any given moment, but when someone comes out and says "at the pace Ponting is currently setting, it is not inconcievable that he could finish his career with over 40 test centuries, 15,000 runs and an average over 60", they may be speaking largely to a cricketing audience that weren't aware of the unbelievable streak of form Ponting is in. It could simply be an example to illustrate his recent performance, rather than a genuine, considered prediction.