Hawking On Earth's Lifespan

Anonymous Coward writes "According to this news (in German) of the computer magazine c't, the world famous physicist Stephen Hawking predicts, that mankind will not survive on earth for another millenium. Hawking fears that the atmosphere will become hotter and contain more and more acid like the atmosphere of the planet Venus, so that men can no longer live on earth. The only solution would be to colonize the space and find another planet to live on."

Comments

Re:Thoughts

[astrophysics]

>"The fundamental problem is that people are causing changes much faster than processes like geology and evolution can react."

> Just to clarify (I think we agree here), life will continue to evolve, but it appears that this stage of evolution entails a mass extinction. Perhaps even our own.

Yes, what I said was technically incorrect, but you figured out what I meant.

> This last bit of your post made me wonder: Assuming we survive our follies, how will life evolve 'around us' afterwards? In other words, what traits might our behaviours be encouraging from the species that surround us?

> By changing the environment so dramatically, might we be encouraging the ability to adapt quickly?

I beleive there's already examples of this. I'm terrible about remembering details, but I seem to remember some body of water had been polluted with chemicals, then legislation was passed to prevent such gross pollution. In reality it was then polluted by some thing else that was introduced intending to help clean up the pollution. Then they figured out to stop trying to fix it themselves and just let the lake (or river or whatever it was) clean itself up. Evidently, someone did a study and found that the species of something (probably very simple like bacteria, algae, etc.) that were left could evolve more quickly than similar somethings taken from anotehr water source that hadn't gone through such truama.

Anyone know what I'm thinking of? A reference would be great. Or is this something that has been done in multiple locations and is commonly known by biologists?

Re:yeah that's the solution

[bitchazz]

come on Libertaran zealot, why piss on Nader, a guy who has served the public selflessly for decades, just because Harry Browne isn't even on the radar in polls? sour grapes?

BTW, how can you possibly take the "Libertarian Party" seriously? A political party that has the Statue of Liberty as its mascot? That is always quick to bark out that it is "the third largest political party?"

I consider myself a libertarian, but I'd rather be caught dead before calling myself a "Libertarian."

Re:Earth won't survive! Sez man who shouldnt survi

[SpryGuy]

It wasn't too long ago, that I saw a list of all the major oil producing countries in the world, along with estimates of their current oil reserves, and their current daily pumping rates.

I did some quick math to divide their reserves by their pumping rates to see just how long they'd last. The longest I saw any lasting was about 70 years, with most drying up between 10 and 30 years. And this assumed constant pumping rates (which have already gone up since that time), and constant ability to remove oil up until the last is retrieved (which simply isn't true... the less oil there is, the harder it is to get out, and the more energy required to wring it out).

Not long after that, I saw two graphs of oil production... one optimistic and one pessimistic. Even the optimistic one showed steep declines in oil production 50 years out.

I think you can factor in the fact that new oil reserves will be discovered and new technologies will allow us to get out oil that isn't feasable now... but that will be offset by the fact that oil consumption is constantly and dramatically increasing even in a fixed population... never mind that the population is constantly growing.

So it would seem that this summer/fall's "energy crisis" is just a small dress rehersal for what is to come... in our lifetimes.

- Spryguy

Re:I never would have thought

[Trinition]

Changes to food sources? We control our food sources. Do you honestly think cows would be here if itweren't for us keeping them alive to eat? Do we just randomly pick berries, or are me genetically altering our foods and plantin them where we want them.

Not only would humans adapt themselves to a changing environment, we'd take everything else we need along for the ride.

So, I didn't ignore it, I just didn't include it in my scope.

Re:He's got a point

[eudas]

well, i did say 'bring out the four tittied bitches' in another post...

eudas

Re:I'd hate to see the Earth become unihabitable..

[kaiser]

Spoon!!!!!
-- Winston Yen

Hawking's an idiot

[Orifice]

This guy is a dinosoar. Space travel is so 20th century. Everyone knows that nanotechnology and synthetic intelligence is what's hip these days. Even if it does get really hot, we can use nanotech to make ourselves really small and all move to the north pole. Sheesh, get a clue Steven!

The Carter hypothesis...

[ralphclark]

...as far as I remember states that:

Because of the exponential nature of population growth, most of the humans who ever lived on Earth either are alive today or were alive until very recently (that therefore includes you). Therefore...

If the human race has a long future ahead of it then regardless of whether population growth slows or continues as before, all of us here today are among the very first humans in the overall history of our race from its beginning to its (unseen, distant) end. But...

The Copernican principle of mediocrity (which is basically a theory of probabilities) tells us that it is highly unlikely that we should find ourselves in such an unusual, privileged position. So...

It is highly unlikely that we are among the first humans, therefore it is highly unlikely that we have a long future ahead of us.

It's not that suprising really. There are plenty of things that could kill us all off, not all of them are even of our own making. Some of them, like superovas in the stellar neighborhood, would still wipe us all out even if we'd spread out into the solar system and the nearest stars.


Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction

For the record..

[PeelBoy]

My comment isn't really based on what the article had to say (I dunno since I didn't read it.. I don't really care what it says)

I think if we keep the earth clean it will last us a long time, but eventually we will have to move.. It might take a few billion years but it'll happen.

I don't think we should move just because -we- are dirty.. Then we will just mess up the next place.. I think cleaning the earth is a pretty large task though.. And you can't force -everybody- to keep it clean (not with out the gov having too much control of our lives anyway)
-----------------------
Jeremy 'PeelBoy' Amberg

Reality Check

[SuperDuG]

Okay this man is obviously one of the smartest people in the entire world if not ... the smartest astrophysicist to date. If this man was not disabled then maybe we'd take it just a little more seriously, but it's more fun to make jokes and give them a rating of 5 because people don't want to hear bad news. Believe it or not the way we treat this planet and the rate that population is increasing coming to the realization that there will be an end to the world may not be that far fetched of an idea.

As for hot spells and acid rain ... Acid rain is nothing new to the world ... just ask anyone in L.A. ... And hot spells ... let's go into the gobi and ask people there how they feel about hot spells ...

Acapolyptic literature has been around since the begining of time ... hence the book of revelations ... people need fear it's a driving force ...

Re:Reality Check

[naasking]

I will see your apocalyptic literature, and raise you a few thousand thermonuclear warheads.
Do you still want to bet on this planet or are you gonna fold?

lol. good one. :-)

-----
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"

Re:Reality Check

[The Good Reverend]

Acid rain is nothing new to the world ... just ask anyone in L.A. ... And hot spells ... let's go into the gobi and ask people there how they feel about hot spells ...

I live within a few miles of Los Angeles, and acid rain isn't a problem. Rain here is just rain. If you want acid rain, try Canada, though I've heard predictions and reality aren't quite matching up. As for the Gobi, it's a desert. Some deserts do tend to get hot.


The Good Reverend

Re:Reality Check

[Azza]

Okay this man is obviously one of the smartest people in the entire world if not ... the smartest astrophysicist to date

Oh, give me a break. He doesn't hold a candle to Einstein, and there are smarter people in the world than him (Roger Penrose springs to mind). Yes, he's smarter than me, but he's more of a media darling than a super-genius, and he'd be the first to admit it.

Offtopic for a second - why the hell hasn't someone written a text-to-speech implementation that sounds even remotely human? How hard is this problem, really? Obviously harder than I think, anyone care to explain what the big deal is? I mean, you're dealing with a finite number of sounds, and even allowing for tonal differences, there's a large number of combinations, but not that large, surely?

Re:Reality Check

[Admiral Burrito]

Acapolyptic literature has been around since the begining of time ... hence the book of revelations ... people need fear it's a driving force ...

Speaking of "reality checks"...

I will see your apocalyptic literature, and raise you a few thousand thermonuclear warheads.

Do you still want to bet on this planet or are you gonna fold?

Re:MilleNNium

[TeknoHog]

Yup. In fact, year == 'annus' which is why 'millennium' has two n's. OTOH there also exists the word 'millenium' but, as you might guess, it means 1000*'anus'. So: fuck millenium.

--

Re:Translations?

[E1ven]

If you check the context, and bring it back to the original text, you see that they quoted it in english.
The title of Hawkings new book will be "The Universe in a Nutshell". I kid you not.

O'Reilly expands to the cosmos, anyone?
--

This message brought to you by Colin Davis

Terraforming

[makhnolives]

Slashdot has already provided an answer to this problem in another story.

We could just terraform Mars. Hook a rocket up to Mir and sent it, fungi and all, crashing into Mars. In a thousand years, the planet will be all green and fuzzy and the streets will be lined with penicillan.

But We Don't Have Venus' Atmosphere

[SEWilco]

Earth does not have the atmosphere of Venus. Venus' atmospheric pressure is 90 times that of Earth. We lost most of our atmosphere in the impact that created the Moon.

Re:What MC Hawking conveniently left out...

[JHromadka]

Is that he implies that humanity has to begin planning now for the eventual exodus of the planet earth.

Correct! One scientist, Hugo Drax, has already begun work on a secret space station that is invisible to our satelite system. He will take only the best and brightest with him (as well as Jaws to keep everyone in line) and then wipe out everyone on earth in order to put them out of their misery. Mr. Bond and Dr. Goodhead are looking into the matter.
------
James Hromadka

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[Talonius]

I wasn't referring to the resource requirements really, but more just the general ability of man to "repair" his environment.

Our only options of repair at this point in time are to cease and desist the damage causing actions. We really don't "repair", as in releasing chemicals that "fill the ozone hole" or something similar.

As for resources, I'm fairly certain that most of the 6 billion would be left behind. As cruel and unusual as it would be, I'd wager a handful from every nation would be the best we could opt for.

(Several really great fiction books have been written on this subject for that matter. Most of them claim a "lottery" would take place, which is of course fixed by the politicians. All I can imagine is the absolute hell that would break loose if we *knew* Earth was going to perish.)

-- Talonius

Re:yeah that's the solution

[neopenguin]

Take it as given that many would agree with you but some would not. How do you convince those who are deeply involved in "artificial human systems" like industrial production, globalization, etc. of your view. Just declaring that it is so won't get the job done.

I recently heard an interview with an oil industry PR whore who personified the oposing view. The guy's argument (long and fully of corporate mangement babble about "adding value", "maximising benefits" etc.) could be sumarized as: "These ecological doomsayers have yet to conclusively proove their point. When we find ourselves living on an uninhabitable palnet, then we'll know they were right. That would be an appropriate time for action, but not before."

To effectively counter this position, you must acknowledge that this argument actually sounds good to people who are heavily invested in polluting the planet, then find a compelling reason to shift their perspective. Any ideas?

Two sides

[Trinition]

Global climate change is part of a pattern that our puny human lifespans are to impatient to measure.

Maybe the global warming is even part of a natural cycle that would normally devastate species but our pollutants have stiffled the magnitude of it and stablized the world.

Whatever the case, there are to sides to every story.

MC Hawking's just trying to sell his new album.

[sprag]

This is all an elaborate promotional stunt to sell his new gansta rap album, tentatively titled "3001: A Space Hawking"

Of course this is just a rumour which hasn't appeared on www.mchawking.com

Re:Does a smart man always tell the whole truth?

[plunge]

No no- you missed the WHOLE point of my comment! My point was that even if we DO totaly destroy the earth and make it unlivable by normal means, why should we move to other planets? I mean, they'd be just as inhospitable as the earth, and to live there, we'd still have to live in artificial habitats. Why can't we just stay on the earth and build these same habitats?

nuclear energy could last us billions of years

[GlenRaphael]

It all sounds like propaganda from the nuclear power industry to me.

The fact that what I tell you is the accepted standard wisdom within the nuclear power industry doesn't make it false. If you want accurate information about how nuclear power works, eventually you'll have to listen to people who know something about it rather than just listening to people who are terrified by it.

Sorry. I not only don't buy that nuclear power is as safe or safer than other forms, but you haven't addressed the primary point I've made, which is that nuclear power as it exists today cannot possibly supply the world's energy needs... it can only delay the inevitable by a few years.

That's a reasonable question. How long will nuclear power last us? You seem to think it will only last "a few" years. What assumptions are you making to get that figure? And by "few" do you mean a thousand years, a hundred years, a dozen years?

Another nuclear advocate, John McCarthy, has an FAQ on nuclear energy as part of his sustainability website; I recommend it to you. His sources calculate that with breeder reactors we could make known supplies of nuclear fuel last for a fair bit more than "a few" years using known technology. Here are some details from this page:

-=-=-
How long will nuclear energy last? These facts come from an article& lt;/A> by Bernard Cohen.

Nuclear energy, assuming breeder reactors, will last for several billion years, i.e. as long as the sun is in a state to support life on earth.

Here are the basic facts.

1. In 1983, uranium cost $40 per pound. The known uranium reserves at that price would suffice for light water reactors for a few tens of years. Since then more rich uranium deposits have been discovered including a very big one in Canada. At $40 per pound, uranium contributes about 0.2 cents per kwh to the cost of electricity. (Electricity retails between 5 cents and 10 cents per kwh in the U.S.)

2. Breeder reactors use uranium more than 100 times as efficiently as the current light water reactors. Hence much more expensive uranium can be used. At $1,000 per pound, uranium would contribute only 0.03 cents per kwh, i.e. less than one percent of the cost of electricity. At that price, the fuel cost would correspond to gasoline priced at half a cent per gallon.

3. How much uranium is available at $1,000 per pound?

   There is plenty in the Conway granites of New England and in shales in Tennessee, but Cohen decided to concentrate on uranium extracted from seawater - presumably in order to keep the calculations simple and certain. Cohen (see the references in his article) considers it certain that uranium can be extracted from seawater at less than $1000 per pound and considers $200-400 per pound the best estimate.

   In terms of fuel cost per million BTU, he gives (uranium at $400 per pound 1.1 cents , coal $1.25, OPEC oil $5.70, natural gas $3-4.)

4. How much uranium is there in seawater?

   Seawater contains 3.3x10^(-9) (3.3 parts per billion) of uranium, so the 1.4x10^18 tonne of seawater contains 4.6x10^9 tonne of uranium. All the world's electricity usage, 650GWe could therefore be supplied by the uranium in seawater for 7 million years.

5. However, rivers bring more uranium into the sea all the time, in fact 3.2x10^4 tonne per year.

6. Cohen calculates that we could take 16,000 tonne per year of uranium from seawater, which would supply 25 times the world's present electricity usage and twice the world's present total energy consumption. He argues that given the geological cycles of erosion, subduction and uplift, the supply would last for 5 billion years with a withdrawal rate of 6,500 tonne per year. The crust contains 6.5x10^13 tonne of uranium.
7. He comments that lasting 5 billion years, i.e. longer than the sun will support life on earth, should cause uranium to be considered a renewable resource.

Comments:

• Cohen neglects decay of the uranium. Since uranium has a half-life of 4.46 billion years, about half will have decayed by his postulated 5 billion years.
• He didn't mention thorium, also usable in breeders. There is 4 times as much in the earth's crust as there is uranium.
• He did mention fusion, but remarks that it hasn't been developed yet. He has certainly provided us plenty of time to develop it.

The main point to be derived from Cohen's article is that energy is not a problem even in the very long run. In particular, energy intensive solutions to other human problems are entirely acceptable.

-=-=-

Right translation!

[PYK]

The reason it gets translated to "Man is a strange animal", is because in english "man" also has the meaning of "humanity"! If more americans had been to school perhaps we StarTrek wouldn't have had to change it to "where no one" has gone before ...

Re:Right translation!

[uradu]

> If more americans had been to school...

If more of them had been to school, indeed, they might actually capitalize "Americans".

hello economics anyone?

[child_of_mercy]

The oil won't run out on the one day.

It will become gradually harder to extract (overall not from any given reserve)

There are plenty of non-economic oil-fields that as scarcity takes its toll will become economical.

And shale extraction is just starting to become economical with the current price. Thats as VAST amount of oil.

To say nothing of the gas deposits just being brought online (yes more expensive to handle.. so the oil price needs to be high to support it)

But the dollar-per-kilowatt cost of solar power is dropping every year.

the day it drops below the steadily rising price of the increasingly scarce oil....

Bingo... the dismal science rides to the rescue once more.

And you can bet once the oil companies run out of oil they might start using any of those inventions/patents the conspiracy theorists keep telling us they have locked up.

Really folks...

We won't run out of power until we get to the Heat-Death of the universe.

But we might kill ourselves long before that.

Or just become something we can't even recognise...

Re:hello economics anyone?

[SpryGuy]

True, it'll be gradual. But consider the riots in Europe this summer over high energy prices. Now magnify that by an order of magnitude over the years as supplies tighten and demand keeps increasing (WE WANT OUR SUVs DAMMIT! )

And while we technically wont run out of power until we get to the heat-death of the universe, there's this little issue of SUPPLY v.s. DEMAND, and demand is only going up while the over-all supply of specific sources of energy either remains constant, is highly variable, or is dwindling.

Solar power just couldn't provide enough power to satisfy the current world economy (you'd have to pave over a huge percentage of the earth and suppliment it with space collecters as well, and you still wouldn't have enough thanks to cloudy days and night-time). Solar just doesn't match the energy density of oil+coal+gas. Ditto for wind power and hydro-electric power. And even with nuclear, there isn't really enough uranium available to power the entire world's thirst for power for more than a decade or two. And the demand for energy keeps rising and rising and rising...

- Spryguy

Re:hello economics anyone?

[Paradise_Pete]

True, it'll be gradual. But consider the riots in Europe this summer over high energy prices.

Yeah, but it's like the deal with putting a frog in boiling water. If you just dump him in he gets really mad and hops out. But if you put him in cold water and gradually heat it to boiling he'll just sit there.

People would become accustomed to the higher prices.

-Pete

Ping time & Mars

[(H)elix1]

Dial up connections are bad enough for Q3.... I'll trade the smog for a good ping time.

Re:This Mentality

[NuclearArchaeologist]

What do you mean "having the better of me"? People telling me where to set my thermostat, what kind of shower and toilet I have to use (in Louisiana we have a drainage problem, but must follow national codes for areas with water shortages), pisses me off. People letting forests that were planted for timber burn rather than be harvested really makes me angry. Some people would rather things go up in smoke before they would see people have cheap lumber to make houses. Their restrictions are either based on a hatred of people, ala "Cheap energy is like putting a machine gun in the hands of a child," or they are misguided. They are not getting the better of anyone.

No luck for you, in any case! I love my wife and we want lots of children. What can be more important than making nice people? We hope the same for all people. What is it, be fruitful and multiply? Rights of reproduction are firmly entrenched in the United Nations Charter and well protected in most of the world.

We also hope that there will be enough for everyone and belive that restrictions on consumption are short sighted and foolish. Unrestricted, wealth has a way of spreading.

It is obvious that you don't like people that dissagree with you. I am sorry, and hope you get better. You should catch some of my flu and start striving with me for better things for yourself and others.

DUHH!! Thats what evolution is for.!!

[magadass]

Hello!!!! This is really a pointless study that doesnt take all account into it. Evolution will enable humans to breath the "new" or not so new atmosphere as I'm sure the first breed of humans could not breathe the atmosphere of today as its highly polluted with toxic fumes causing more damage than 2 cigarettes a day in highly populated areas such as new york city. Nature will always find a way to keep us alive along with all the other creatures. I mean hell if fungus can live in space im sure we can breathe acid air.

Re:Not another "extremist" cause

[RayChuang]

Mike,

What drives me even more nuts about the "global warming" crowd is that between 700 and 1100 AD, much of northern Europe was much warmer than it is now.

Think about it: the Vikings that discovered Greenland before 1000 AD didn't call it "Greenland" for nothing. It's obvious that their settlement in what is now Newfoundland wasn't called "Vinland" for nothing, either. In that same period, written records from Church monastaries in northern Europe noted quite warm summers and relatively mild winters.

And this same crowd was warning of "global cooling" 25 years ago--give me a freakin' break!

Re:This Mentality

[OmniDude]

What I meant was that you seem to personalize any limitation on your freedom:

Keep me from things to suit you?

People telling me [what to do] pisses me off.

All I really want is that you acknowledge that environmental issues are NOT by default a question of busybodies who wants to control your life for their own personal pleasure, because that is how your stance come out.
It's really a question of graduation. You and I are probably never going to share worldviews, but I'm not anymore of a worlddistant, tree-hugging maniac hellbent on you as a slave in a plan economy than you are a machinegun-toting NRA-fanatic with wet dreams about a 100% unregulated marketeconomy and a differently colored Ferrari for every day of the week.
I agree with you that there are fanatics who use braindead methods in their struggle for the environment, but I'm sure that you'll agree that on your wing this kind of people exist too, and neither of us would like to be mistaken for these fanatics.

So please, moderate your statements and I'll moderate mine and then let's have a constructive debate instead. I'll grant you that there have been ecological initiatives that have proven to be inconsequential or downright damaging to the environment and as such a unneccesary strain on peoples freedom. Perhaps you'll grant me that sometimes it's better to be safe than sorry when it comes to the world that we pass on to our kids?

As for kids, I was a bit out of line there, sorry. Believe me, when you get your own, your view on what's acceptable and what's not as far as your personal freedom goes will change a lot! I have 2 and they are timestealers on 2 legs. I barely manage to find time to post here, but God I love them like I've never loved something before.
***

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Well, I have one porblem with your theory....It doesn't work unless we were dropped here by some alien force millions of years go. Last I checked, WE ARE A NATURAL PHENOMENON on this planet and we have existed doing so called "cruel" things to his planet long before cars and industry has been invented. We are a tiny tiny part of the whole picture and to think that we have enough power to affect things on a GLOBAL scale is ridiculous! Right now, I bet you that we are a minority creature on the planet. There are far more insects out there then there are humans. There are far more bacteria then there are humans. We would be arrogant to think we are big enough to affect this (unless we are totally stupid and do something idiotic like NOT developing alternative fuels (like fuel cells and electric cars.).

I am not saying there is no cause for concern, but we don't have to be paranoid about it. If there is no equivalent to gas except really expensive, not so useful electric vehicles like the impact, then why don't we see if we can make engines that burn the gas cleaner, or scrub more CO2 from the exhaust. Alternative fuels need not put the oil industry out of business. Even with alternative fuels, we still need oil to lubricate things. There's a really good web site that tells alot of myths and misconceptions about global warming. Strangely enough it's http://www.globalwarming.org. There are several articles about some of the scientists who previously thought the situation was dire thinking it's not so dire anymore.

long half-lives are misleading

[GlenRaphael]

Well, you see, the problem with nuclear waste is that it remains highly toxic and highly radioactive for tens or hundreds of thousands of years.

If something has a half-life of a hundred-thousand years or more then by definition that means it's breaking down very slowly which means it's not releasing very much radiation per unit time. It's actually the stuff with a short half-life that's dangerous to have around. But that's a self-limiting problem; it's dangerous but it quickly becomes less so as time passes. Wait five or ten years and it's less of a hazard than lots of household chemicals.

Regarding "highly toxic", Chorine is highly toxic too -- and would stay so for a million years if you kept it in a pressurized vat somewhere for that long -- yet nobody minds having it around it to clean swimming pools because the chance of somebody coming across a batch and drinking or breathing it by accident is so small. Ditto for nuclear waste that is merely chemically poisonous.

Re:long half-lives are misleading

[SpryGuy]

Tell me again how plutonium (a by-product of many nuclear reactions) isn't all that dangerous compared to house-hold chemicals?

- Spryguy

Re:long half-lives are misleading

[GlenRaphael]

Tell me again how plutonium (a by-product of many nuclear reactions) isn't all that dangerous compared to house-hold chemicals?

Okay. Plutonium is primarily dangerous to people due to its chemistry, not due to its radioactivity. If you eat a sufficient amount of it you could die, just as you could if you drank bleach or ammonia, two common household chemicals. I'm not saying the plutonium isn't deadly - it is. What I am saying is that being deadly doesn't make it particularly unusual or dangerous if appropriately handled. And in fact nuclear waste _is_ less toxic to humans than those two common household chemicals after it's had some time to cool off.

Author James P. Hogan deals with some of this better than I do, especially in an essay he wrote called _Know Nukes_. So here's an item from his web page on the subject:

-----
Following the items I've posted advocating nuclear as ultimately the only way to go, a number of people have repeated the frequently asked question of what to do about the waste. My response is that it's a needlessly manufactured political problem, not a technical one. And in any case the problem itself is minor compared to what we have at present.

A single 1,000 Megawatt coal plant releases something like 600lb carbon dioxide and 30lb sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere per second, and as much nitrogen oxides as 200,000 automobiles, all of which is estimated to cause 25 premature fatalities and 60,000 cases of respiratory complaints per year, per plant. In addition, it has to get rid of 30,000 truck-loads of ash annually--enough to cover a square mile sixty feet deep--full of carcinogens, highly acidic or highly alkaline depending on the kind of coal, and, ironically, emitting more radiation from trace uranium than a nuke is permitted to. That's a real waste-disposal nightmare for you.

The hysteria about toxicity is not justified by anything factual. After its initial on-site cooling-off period (i.e. at the point where it would be transported to a deep-burial site as currently proposed) high-level wastes would be about as toxic as barium or arsenic if ingested, and 1/10th that of ammonia or 1/1000th that of chlorine--which we use liberally to clean our bathtubs and swimming pools-- if inhaled. After 100 years, these figures drop to 1/1000th, 1/100,000th, and 1/10,000,000th respectively. The"conventional" types of waste remain lethal, and far less easily detectable, forever.

Some figures:

250 nuclear plants would generate enough waste to kill 10 billion people. True, if it were freely accessible, and people obligingly lined up to receive their daily dose or intake of it. The same is probably true also of gasoline. By the same token the U.S already produces enough:

arsenic trioxide to kill 10 billion people
barium to kill 100 billion.
ammonia to kill 6 trillion.
phosgene to kill 20 trillion.
chlorine to kill 400 trillion

As for plutonium having a long half-life, so what? Compost heaps and incense sticks have long half-lives; napalm bombs and gunpowder have short ones. The public health limits on plutonium in drinking water are 400 times higher than for radium, which is used safely as a matter of course in practically every hospital.

In short, N-waste turns out to be significantly less hazardous than many other substances that are handled routinely in far greater volumes, and with far less care.

The sensible way to deal with waste (actually a potentially valuable by-product) is to reprocess it into new fuel and burn it up in reactors, which not only solves the "problem" but would save about $4 billion in imported oil costs in the lifetime of a 1,000 MW plant. Roughly 96% of the spent fuel that comes out of a plant can be handled in this way. The remaining "high level" waste from a year's operation of a 1,000 MW (large) plant takes up about half a cubic yard.

This is what the U.S. nuclear industry was set up to do--as the rest of the world is doing--until political obstructionism in the late 1970s halted work on the Barnwell facility in South Carolina, which was being built to handle commercial wastes. Legislation passed at the same time cut the utilities off from the military facilities that had been handling commercial wastes safely since the 1950's. The result was that 100% of what comes out of the reactors is having to be treated as if it were high-level waste, to be stored in ways that were never intended, and this is what gets all the publicity.

So, in answer to "What about the waste?" What about it?
-----

How's that?

Re:long half-lives are misleading

[SpryGuy]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That conveniently ignores a whole host of problems with nuclear waste, nuclear by-products, and other difficulties. These are not politically manufacturered things either. When a coal-burning plant blows up, the land around it doesn't become uninhabitable for centuries. I mean, just LOOK at Chernobyle...

AND remember that the 'sufficient amount' of plutonium to kill you is measured in micro-grams... an amount virutally invisible to the naked eye. And the form of death is rather horrifying as well (i.e. slow, stealthy, agonizing). It's a lot different from trying to ingest a lot of bleach ...

And nuclear waste REQUIRES a lot more care than standard waste... store it wrong, and things can go BOOM.

Statistics can be used to twist just about anything. When it comes to radiation, I'd rather be careful UP FRONT. Add to it the fact that building all the nuclear plants in the world won't really help the energy crunch all that much (the supply of uranium is far more limited than the supply of fossil fuels) and the fact that it's so expensive (building the plants, the intense safety requirements, the long-term disposal safety requirements), and it's just not much of an answer.

- Spryguy

Re:long half-lives are misleading

[SpryGuy]

Let me rephrase more clearly: Stating that plutonium is less dangerous than the household bleach I use every week in my own home is the purest rubbish. It is that kind of propaganda that will do nothing but turn people away from any valid points you might actually have.

- Spryguy

sigh

[samantha]

There are many reasons why humans as we know them today might not be around but world overheading and becoming that acidic is not high on the list. We know ways to avoid much of that and will do them if the need becomes pressing enough. The state of the world's atmosphere today even in major industrial areas is much better than a few decades ago. We actually have made inroads into air pollution and I'm sure we could do better.

I think it is more likely by far that we will transform beyond recognition and/or upload into AIs before we will simply have to leave due to the atmosphere being to foul.

I'm am amazed to see someone of Hawking's caliber come out with such a prediction. If it is an area of special study of his he should know better and if it is not he should definitely know better to put his name on a mere opinion of this kind.

Re:Plutonium dangers overrated

[SpryGuy]

Far more people are poisoned by burning fossil fuels than by radiation.

Of course. Look at the vastly different ratio of burnt fossil fuels to radiation. A lot more people are killed in auto-accidents than by meteor impacts too.

...even though nuclear plants (at least in this country) have much better safety systems and have a much, much lower accident rate.

Because they're under much tighter regulatory control, have much higher and stricter standards and safety mechinisms, at a much higher cost. If the chemical plants and the like were subject to the same rules and regulations and enforcement, they'd be a hell of a lot safer than they are, no?

The last I heard, current Uranium reserves will supposedly last well over 100 years at the current burn rate.

Very true... at the current burn rate. But that's not what was being discussed, now was it? I'm talking about REPLACING our existing fossil fuel sources with nuclear power. Uranium is a limited resource just like fossile fuels, and thus doing this doesn't solve the problem anyway! Which is entirely my point. It's hugely more expensive (due to all the necessary detectors, controls, rules, regulations, safety precautions, disposal problems, etc) and doesn't really get us much farther down the road. A little bit, sure. But it's still tap-dancing on the deck of the titanic, isn't it?

- Spryguy

Re:Gross is all you need sometimes.

[Stoutlimb]

Sorry to break your bubble my friend, but the Demographic Transition is far more than just idle theory... There is huge evidence to back it up. You force me to quote sources.

http://www.unfpa.org/swp/1998/pressumary2.htm
http://www.sru.edu/depts/artsci/ges/d-3-13a.htm
http://www.uwmc.uwc.edu/geography/Demotrans/demt ran.htm

A search on google will produce you a veritable flood of information. This is a very old concept begun in 1929, and has become the basic staple education of demography. Sorry man, but doubting demographic transition is like doubting evolution... You can, but you won't seem credible doing it.

Bork!

Hit a nerve?

[marcus]

And finally, pal, why don't you shove your "stupid comment of the week" crack straight up your dumb ass. When you have something to say that isn't just you trying to prove that you've been reading the "Scientific American" subscription your mom got for you, you come try again

Ooooh some big and some nasty words. Doing your best to make a good impression on all the kids here, I guess. Hey, at least he reads. I imagine his mom taught him rather than some nameless NEA member. It's really amazing what a good family can do for manners. Well color me stubborn, but I'll still bet that you'll complain when the wind stops blowing and your lights go out.

Hmm, perhaps not, as you seem to like sitting in the dark.

Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.

Re: Hit a nerve?

[GooseKirk]

I guess I did hit a nerve. Nice try at being clever, but your point would be... ?

life sucks

[decoup]

well, if life is going to end it might as well end in the next millenia.In my humble opinion i am surprised we survived this long without destroying ourselves.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[domc]

Great; now we just have to focus all of our energy into solving problems...instead of creating new ones. Too bad we're better at creating problems.

Dom

"Yo, this one goes out to all you punk bitches who think the Hawk-man is soft just because I'm wicked smart"--MC Hawking

"My dick is twice as long as my attention span"--MC Hawking

Re:...got a point on his head!

[naasking]

Good points about the Earth's bio-diversity and how difficult it would be to replicate it, especially in an alien environment. I hadn't really considered that, though I still shared your opinion anyway. If I had any mod points, you would have had my vote. :-)

-----
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"

Independance Day

[Spudley]

"They're like locusts. They move from planet to planet, consuming every natural resource, and then the move on to the next."

[mis?]quote from the movie Independance Day. He was referring to the aliens, but who else was reminded of it when they read this article?

Re:Independance Day

[joeytsai]

What about the Agent telling Morpheus that humans were like a virus in The Matrix?

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[TrumpetPower!]

The ozone hole is even in doubt according to some scientists.

Some "scientists" even belive that the Earth is flat. So what's your point?

b&

Re:Funny Babelfish Translations

[Nick Driver]

turns the earth into bubbling sulfuric acid!

All the surfuric acid will end up bein in gaseous state, not liquid, and hence won't bubble.

Re:yeah RIGHT.

[(void*)]

Would you like to be around when they are proven right?

Wait - Hawking predicts that the world will end in 100 years, well after he is done fertilizing the soil? Ah!

Re:yeah that's the solution

[GooseKirk]

So who are you voting for? Nader? Buchanan? The Natural Law candidate? P.J. O'Rourke?

Re:Another Liberal fearmonger

[American AC in Paris]

Bah. Don't trust the word of a man of whom God has surely passed judgement upon.

Call me crazy, but I was under the impression that the Christian God passed judgement on everybody--otherwise, how do you determine who gets into Heaven, The Ultimate Playground? Mind you, I learned all this from a pretty dated source, so there could be an updated version that I haven't read yet or something. Of course, if you want to go pointing fingers at organizations bent on shackling freedoms...

But to your point. I'll assume that you're a fairly religious type of person, and you firmly believe that you'll be getting into heaven in due time. Why, then, does it matter one bit to you what us hopelessly lost souls do with our earthly time and money? You're gonna get into HEAVEN, man! Who cares if we drop a few bucks on rocket ships? What does it matter how earthly governments run their affairs? You're still gonna win out over us all!

(I know, I know, I shouldn't have...but look at the poor thing--he looks so hungry!)

I'd hate to see the Earth become unihabitable...

[Narag]

It's where I keep all my stuff :(

Timeframe

[guinan]

Stop and think of this claim for a moment. A change this volatile would kill not only humans, but most of the world's higher lifeforms. If conditions are really going down that fast, we should see the death of all cold-blooded creatures by the end of the century (because of the increase in temperature.) In the history of the Earth there has not been that abrupt of a change short of a major dinosaur-like catastrophe.
Realistically, yes, temperatures will change, but they'll change slowly enough that even some humans will be able to adapt. (They might not remain "human" per say, but thats off topic)
Lastly, aren't we up for an ice age in a millenia or two?


-guinan

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[Chanc_Gorkon]

I agree we should care more about space exploration, but I disagree with Hawking. Mother Earth is stronger then we even know. Global warming? Tell that to me when I am freezing my arse off in record cold this winter (notice you never hear about global warming in the middle of winter, at least in the US). Global warming is a farce. Several respected Meteorologists have dissmissed this as BUNK! If we ARE the cause of global warming, then, how come the trend of rising temps occured BEFORE cars have been invented??? It's CYCLICAL! Just like El Nino. The earth is stronger then ANY one being on this planet (ok, except GOD!! ).

Solution!

[yumyum]

Lets have a "Cool The Earth" day, where everyone runs all the airconditioners they have (house, car) and leav all the doors open...

Re:Solution!

[JimPooley]

Doh!
Airconditioning actually adds to global warming, by using more electricity which is mostly generated by burning fossil fuels...
The cleanest method of large scale power generation is nuclear* power - but the greenies, in profound irony, don't like that...

(*Because all you groovy fuckers are going to say this: ObHomer: "That's Nukeular... Nukeular."
I despair about you lot sometimes, I really do.)

Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems

Re:Men?

[jbarnett]

"...like the atmosphere of the planet Venus, so that men can no longer live on earth."

Women are from Venus and they are used to that type of weather, if I recall correctly men are from Mars and are not adapitable to Venus's envoirment. So techinally women will be able to survive on this planet where as men will have to move back to mars or the moon or something.

That is going to suck, the closed female will be planets away, it is going to take forever to go on any dates.

5100 more years?

[tetrad]

There's a Princeton astrophysicist, Richard Gott III, who predicts civilization will last somewhere between 5100 and 7.8 million more years. His argument is based on the idea that there's nothing "special" about our location in time. That is, he assumes that it's pretty unlikely we're either at the dawn or end of our existence, but more likely somewhere in between. From this assumption, he arrives at fuzzy timeframes for the age of our civilization. I'm not sure the initial assumption holds water, but then again, I'm no Princeton astrophysics professor.

There's been quite few things written about him and his theory, but at the moment, the only one I can find is this article, which summarizes most of his arguments.

Re:5100 more years?

[OmniDude]

I heard about that argument before and it's absolutely brilliant....at showing that people can be lured into believing any argument that comes from a authority and is delivered with a certain amount of technical mumbo-jumbo.

It's really nothing but a variation over the argument that for each consecutive time a coinflip comes out heads up, the probability that the next flip will produce a tail rises. Seems reasonable, but as any pro gambler will tell you, not valid.

And the man doesn't take into account anything about the present situation and condition of the Earth, making it all abstract matematics.

Are we to conclude that no matter what we do mankind is safe for at least 50 centuries more? I think not!

***

Re:one major flaw....

[tolan's my name]

When the Greek empire got to big to be able to control, it fell and there rose the Roman empire
There was never a 'Greek-empire' as such, what we call ancient Greece was a large collection of politically independent, culturally similiar states; sharing strong trading links and centered aroung the Agean sea. The term is perhaps comparable to the use of 'the west' today.
...On the other hand a Greek [Macedonian], Alexander, did conqueror a huge empire, but it started to collapse as soon as he died.

(my historical knowledge fails me at that point)
If your interested the empire in the west collapsed, and was latter, to a degree, ressurected by charlmagne (charles the great); it then spilt into France and the Holy Roman Empire, which was what they used to call Germany (except it included modern-day poland, austria and benelux etc etc )
The empire survived in the east untill about 900ad (IIRC) with the capitial being Constantinople (Istanbul). This is usual refered to as the Byzantine empire, and was eventually crushed by the Ottoman turks, who reached Vienna dont 'cha know

Note that most european empires since have claimed the mantle of the Roman empire to validate their actions. tsar and kaiser are both coruptions of ceasar..............

Re:I'm so glad!

[ucblockhead]

As long as we procreate by exchanging genetic material, we continue to evolve.

I mean, what do you think the Darwin awards are about, anyway?

Well, instead of flight

[mackga]

why not start looking at the poss. of underground cities? Or maybe domed ones - ala the cities Azimov talked about on Earth in the Robot series? As long as you have a stable power supply and power plant, you can live for quite some time in a hostile environment - think nuclear powered missle subs.......

Re:Well, instead of flight

[freq]

Too bad i was so late finding this article.

Bucky Fuller demonstrated that we could build domes over our largest cities right now and it would demonstrate massive energy savings over our current method of climate control. A gigantic dome exposes only a fraction of surface area of all our collective little box-shaped homes when you add them all together.

yeah that's the solution

[djKing]

The only solution would be to colonize the space and find another planet to live on.

Yeah that will be much easier that cleaning up the one we have now. -Peace Dave

Re:yeah that's the solution

[daBum]

Some people (crackpots? geniuses? nutcases? take your pick) are working on the alternative energy problem. There are tons listed on www.crank.net. The one I've been most interested in is one about the Searle Effect.

Basically the premise of Searle consists of a motor made of impressed AC magnetic fields, which achieve their lowest energy state while rotating. (Check out the link, he does a better job of explaining it...) I don't know if it's true or not, but if it works, it would be a welcome advance.

IIRC, much of the "smog" produced in larger cities comes from the power plants in the area (as well as other industries, I'm sure, but indulge me a minute...). IF the device Searle proposes works, and can be manufactured to be large enough, then power plants could shift from coal burning infernos to magnetic generators, thereby reducing pollution, and improving (well, less destructive to) the environment.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[jallen02]

*chuckle* thats the point humans are so fucking smart but we cant seem to get grips on one simple thing such as being responsible for ourselves, earth will take care of us too. Who cares I have a car that sucks more gas than you can imagine, its really fun to drive too. I recycle, I do my part as far as one person can go to not be incredibly wasteful, I make concious decisions that are easy to make as a consumer to not waste much (except the car thing..) But my emissions are really clean even without cats.... anways,my point is if we are so hell bent on eliminating ourselves why complain.

Jeremy

Re:yeah that's the solution

[Col. Panic]

Bush's proposal that to "solve" the energy crises, we should go make more oil rigs in Alaska! Instead, of course, of forcing the energy industry to redeem to us our investment in them to create alternative energy solutions.

Oil companies forced to find alternative energy solutions - and by a Texan? Nah. Oil companies make *way* too much money in the current state of affairs. The public is going to have to push, kick and drag politicians into making oil companies find alternative sources of energy, and those companies will only do it when they think they have first milked the public of everything they can get. It's disgusting, but it's business.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[um... Lucas]

Ummmmm... Do you really think it'd be easier to move our trash or 12 billion people (a guess at what our population will be... a very very low guess)?

Or do you propose a noah's arc type deal? Maybe something out of Moonraker (it was just on last night so it's fresh in my mind). Who choses who goes and who stays? Is this information made public, or do the chosen few just sort of sneak off? Because if it's made public that "oh, you're all gonna die, but we're going to escape because we're special" i doubt anyone would be leaving the planet.

Maybe we should just realize that our time may come to an end and start devising ways to transport simple (single-cell) organisms to other planets and solar systems in the hopes that they'll one day evolve into a greater lifeform. It'd seem like the much more noble way to do it...

Of course, we could spend the next 2000 years trying to figure a way to eject the greenhouse gasses from our atmosphere or recycle them...

Re:yeah that's the solution

[NecroPuppy]

I second this. You know, I don't consider myself a sandal wearing tree-hugging nut, but I do really think it is stupid that environmentalism is considered radical. It really is dumb. Environmental soundness should not be percieved as radical, but should be the *default* modus operandi.

P.J. O'Rourke talked about this in his books, Parliment of Whores and All the Trouble in the World.

Environmentalism is a special interest group. However, it tries to go beyond that by appeals such as "the environment affects everyone", which is true. I don't disagree with environmentalism per se, but when the environmental groups make statements such as, "...the environment must be preserved, regardless of cost..." you have to wonder what part of it they are smoking.

Now, as far a global warming, and the like goes, does anyone here remember what the big environmental scare of the 70s was?

Global cooling.

And guess what you could do then to prevent global cooling, and stop those glaciers from crashing down on us? The exact same things that are being touted as the cures for global warming.

And Gore's one of the worst of the bunch. In one of his books, I think it was Earth in the Balance, he advocated raising the taxes on fossil fuels so high that no one would use them.

(Of course, he's also advocated moving all chemical companies out of the US, to help the environment...)

By the way, for those wondering, I'm not voting for Bush... I'm voting against Gore...

NecroPuppy
---
NecroPuppy

Re:yeah that's the solution

[paulio]

The current survey of planets on nearby sun-like stars has a scary early conclusion: all nearby stars surveyed so far (about 30?) are completely uninhabitable because of huge Jupiter sized gas planets in really eccentric orbits. (Anyone have the URL?)

It would seem that our solar system with almost round orbits is very rare. Just how many light years out are we supposed to go, all the while dragging all our stuff with us?

Anyway, I have a difficult time just dragging the stuff that I need for a two week camping trip. How much stuff am I going to need for a journey of 100 light years? Will I even be alive once I get there?

Re:yeah that's the solution

[Shotgun]

You know, I don't consider myself a sandal wearing tree-hugging nut, but I do really think it is stupid that environmentalism is considered radical. It really is dumb. Environmental soundness should not be percieved as radical, but should be the *default* modus operandi.

Unfortunately, common sense is often overruled in the average joe by a reaction to overbearing, sandal wearing, tree-hugging nuts in positions of power in our government. The radicals push to hard in one direction, declaring every piece of ground that has ever been rained on a 'wetland', for instance, or prosecuting an old farmer for killing a rat. Or banning deer hunting on federal lands so that the population spikes and disease and starvation set in to kill the deer. Or peoples private property are confiscated without renumeration in order to save the 'snail dart'.

These questionably overbearing examples bother the average joe gives the PR, everything-should-disposable shills an opening. The intelligent environmentalist are dismissed with the nuts and everyone's worse off.

The capitalist have determined that disposable is profitable. The population have determined that disposable is easy. The intelligent have determined that disposable is going to kill us all, but since they don't make a profit and half of them look and act crazy anyway, nobody is listening to them.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[GooseKirk]

My point was, if you hate Gore, that does not mean you have to vote for Bush. It's a false dichotomy. It's phony. It's a cheap way to try to excuse yourself of the fact that you are voting for a total moron.

A vote for Bush is not a vote against Gore, it's a vote for an idiot. When you pick your candidate, you are choosing someone to represent you. There aren't any boxes on the ballot that say "I hate Al". You pick who you want. If you want to pick "I'm with stupid", that's fine, but don't play like that's not what you're doing.

If you really don't want to vote for an asshole, then pick someone else... write yourself in if you have to. It'd be nice if there were a "None of the above" option, but we don't have that, and voting for one wanker "against" the other wanker is hardly a substitute.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[jallen02]

And.. there are those of us who believe that for the most part the "greenhouse effect" is a bunch of BS. More CFC's are released from one single volcanic eruption than you can dream of releasing in your lifetime.

Yeah some things like smog are rather nasty, but that is something pretty easy to fix, things like "the world will become a toxic" waste are just a bunch of stupid crap.

Unless someone gets crazy and tosses a few nukes about or something really I dont think we have any problems

Earth has its own cycles that we strive very hard to but never can comprehend.

Earth can take care of itself I think, *shrugs*

Jeremy

Re:yeah that's the solution

[um... Lucas]

oops. My bad. However, if there is a solution to be found, i'm sure we could find one within 1000 years. Humans are funny that way, always thinking up new things to solve their problems.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[Chainsaw Messiah]

Earth has its own cycles that we strive very hard to but never can comprehend.

But what if at one of the "warm" peaks in the earth's cycle, us silly humans add 1 or 2%
more "warmness". Could that be enough to drop us over the happy climate edge? I'd image that
after all this time in the earth's existance it has found it's own balance. Now us clever
people are mucking about in it with our own stuff (peeing in our own pool, if you will) while
having no concept of future impact. Can we really know that what we do today won't bite us in
the ass 1000 years from now?

Re:yeah that's the solution

[plague3106]

It's disgusting, but it's business.

Thats redundent.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[Black Parrot]

> You know, I don't consider myself a sandal wearing tree-hugging nut, but I do really think it is stupid that environmentalism is considered radical. It really is dumb.

And I second that. We despise pigs for wallowing in their own shit. Couldn't we do just a little bit better?

--

Re:yeah that's the solution

[DickBreath]

Those invested in polluting the planet will be dead long before the species dies.

(This should be quite obvious, but I state it anyway, to lead into...)

Therefore, it is unlikely that you'll find a compelling argument to make them voluntarily give up their "artificial human systems" (i.e. money) for some hypothetical problem that they'll never live to see.

Therefore, don't bother trying to convince them. They must be compelled somehow. (i.e. forced) And even then, since their incentive to cheat remains, some kind of strict monitoring must be maintained. Indefinitely.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[fredrik70]

To effectively counter this position, you must acknowledge that this argument actually sounds good to people who are heavily invested in polluting the planet, then find a compelling reason to shift their perspective. Any ideas? kneecapping?

Re:yeah that's the solution

[vab]

Didn't his mom ever read him the Dr. Seuss story of the Lorax?

Does everyone remember the Lorax? We should RE-run that on TV instead of the stupid closed presidential debates.

Earth First!

- VAB

Re:yeah that's the solution

[spiro_killglance]

Of course you've never seem it before, that because is bollocks, Volcanos release plenty of fluorine and chlorine but their don't make complex ChloroFluoroHydroCarbons because complex molecules like that don't exist in nature in quanity because they require complicated manufacturing.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[fredrik70]

>Will I even be alive once I get there?
nope, you probably wont be alive before it leaves ;-)

Re:yeah that's the solution

[Refrag]

"Of course, we could spend the next 2000 years trying to figure a way to eject the greenhouse gasses from our atmosphere or recycle them..."

Hawkings said that we only have 1000 years left, though.


Refrag

Re:yeah that's the solution

[silicon_synapse]

Well I'm glad SOMEBODY around here still has a little sense. I agree 100%. Of course that's no excuse to trash the planet. We still need to be carefull and responsible, but if we think we can totally destroy this planet in only a few millenia then we have a serious ego problem.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[Chiasmus_]

This is fucking hilarious.

Vote "I'm with stupid
My thoughts, at this point:

W. Bush is the devil.
Al Gore is not the devil, but he has an annoying tendency to fuck everything up.
Ralph Nader's social policy is perfect. His economic policy will make us all very poor.
The Libertarian party stands an even chance of plunging us into chaos.

Perhaps I will vote for CmdrTaco.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[silicon_synapse]

I think you missed the point. He's voting for Bush not because he likes him but because he dislikes Gore. At least that's how I read it. I have a similar mentality.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[NecroPuppy]

Yeah that will be much easier that cleaning up the one we have now.

Actually it might be. Given the toxicity and lifespan of some the garbage we've produced on this planet, moving could be considered an option.

However, before that could happen, we'd have to have a much less expensive system of getting goods to orbit; such as the various SSTO projects that made the news a couple years ago.

Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of 'local' real estate that's any good nearby...

BTW, anyone got an english translation of the article? For some reason, the Fish is blocked from where I am.

NecroPuppy
---
Godot called. He said he'd be late.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[grappler]

politicians suck, man... I'm voting for either Nader or John Hagelin. They're both a little crazy but that's part of the appeal. I wish we'd see more of Hagelin - he's by far the smartest person running...

Re:yeah that's the solution

[superape23]

If you want to vote against gore, please vote for nader, if you don't agree with his politics fine, he won't win, you are in fact voting for a chance to let a 3rd party into the debates and to get access to federal funds, if you don't like gore cause he is full of it (and he is) then please consider how much more in the pocket of corporate interests bush is and what a bad president he would be (ie think clin-ton is a corporate pawn, just wait till bush is in there)

thanks

Re:yeah that's the solution

[TicTacTux]

Indeed. Short-term profit and the shareholder value (ha! I am a shareholder of Earth, Inc. and I am interested in its health!) are more important than some fresh air or green meadows for our children. After all, most don't think farther than the next election...

(salt into your wounds: Who, I ask, refused to commit himself to strict and stringent measures against pollution at the last climate conference?)

Bad Hair Days are no excuse to use questionable hair spray cans!
One can only hope oil reserves will be depleted really soon, so looking for alternatives is not just a question of money...

Re:yeah that's the solution

[Sir Tristam]

You can "shrug off" Liberty's senseless warnings about greenhouse gasses, explain the volcano thing, and tell her to get a fucking haircut.

But this is Steven Hawkings talking.

Might I point out that Steven Hawkings is a theoretical physicist, not an environmental bio-chemist? Just because he's the top in one field doesn't mean that he knows squat in another field. I don't know about you, but if I had to have heart sugery done, I would pick a fairly decent thoracic cardiovascular sugeon over the world's best veternarian (or even oral surgeon, for that matter) any day of the week.

Not to take anything away from Steven Hawkings, of course. If I needed a description of how a black hole would peel the atmosphere off the Earth if the two collided, I'd ask Hawkings. For a prediction of the environmental future of the Earth otherwise, he's not tops on my list.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[GooseKirk]

OK, well, there's some things you and I agree on, and some things we just don't. I've got all of P.J. O'Rourke's books and think he's a wonderful writer ("How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Having Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink" is, in my opinion, the high point of twentieth-century literature). And my family's pretty sure I'm an asshole, too.

I still don't believe in voting for the least objectionable candidate who has a certain percentage chance of winning. I believe in voting for someone who represents me... even if that's me, and I'm the only one who votes for me (which I haven't actually done yet, by the way, but I might).

The only thing I don't get, though, is that you say you don't agree with a lot of what Dubya says... but somehow the promise to be responsible for his actions resonates with you (say, speaking of which, whatever happened to that cocaine question?). Man, I just don't get it. What the fuck is it supposed to mean? Fine, so, what, when Dubya gets an Oval Office hummer (and yeahhhhh, I'm sure that will never happen, wink wink), he'll tell us all about it in a State of the Union address? "My fellow Americans, I'm here tonight to tell ya - straight up, I'm not gonna lie to ya - whooo nelly, this new intern we got smokes a MEAN pole, if you know what I'm sayin', and I think ya do. Hey, just do me a favor and y'all keep it quiet, though... wouldn't do if the missus found out!" And who cares about the South Carolina flag (unless, uh, you live there, I guess, and even then it's a pretty goddamn goofy-ass issue to elect a president on)?

You know what I think of Dubya? Every time I see him speak I'm always waiting for him to start sounding like a down-home good-ol'-boy version of Professor Frink... "We'll be getting some revengination on Osama bin Laden, with the car bombs and the blowing up and the murderous killing of the people who he kills murderously and... hoyle!"

But! I will say this... Al Gore is nowhere near as funny as Bush, so for sheer entertainment value I suppose you can't go wrong with Dubya. If he wins, god help us all, at least we can count on a constant stream of blunders, faux pas, malapropisms and general stupidity. And that's worth something. Can't say it's worth, oh, drilling for oil in our national parks, but at least it's something. At least the Republicans make for entertaining villains... the Democrats haven't had a good bad guy since LBJ.

Ah, but who am I kidding. I'm writing in Jesse Ventura for president this year. And Hulk Hogan for vice-president. I'm hoping they'll appoint the cast of "Baywatch" for cabinet members, and really, isn't it about time Jon Bon Jovi got a Supreme Court seat?

Yeah, you think I'm just trying to be funny, but you wait 20 years. We'll see what a couple decades of voting for jerkoffs and paid-for corporate toadies gets us. Just don't come crying to me when the Olsen Twins become governor of your state.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[Your Login Here]

This isn't rocket science, our current method of finding planets is looking for a wobble in the light from a star.

This method can only be used to find large planets that are close to their sun.
All we have found so far is large planets close to their sun.

The method of searching itroduces a bias. We really have no idea if their are earth-like planets out their because we have no way to spot them.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[shaidarharan]

Yes, the Earth can take care of itself, but we need to take care of ourselves. All this talk of destroying our environment, we may be making it uninhabitible for ourselves, but in the end the Earth will be just fine, we will have only been a little blip on the radar of geologic time.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[mikeraz]

We despise pigs for their reputation of wallowing in mud to stay cool.

Pigs don't wallow in their own shit. For that matter, they are among the cleanest of domesticated critters. Pig won't eat and shit in the same place. Unlike cows which will shit on their own food or dogs which eat shit.

If we were as concientious as pigs we'd be taking care of the environment.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[NecroPuppy]

My point was, if you hate Gore, that does not mean you have to vote for Bush. It's a false dichotomy. It's phony. It's a cheap way to try to excuse yourself of the fact that you are voting for a total moron.

Well, let's take a look at the candidates:

Gore - Dislike his politics, dislike his wife's politics (I like rock music), dislike Clinton's politics (which Gore is the inheritor of), so he's a no go.

Bush - Disagree with a lot of what he says, but he promises to take responsibility for his own actions, and after the last 8 years, we need someone who will say that. Also the only candidate (from a major party) who said that the South Carolina Confederate Flag issue was for South Carolinians alone to decide.

Nader - This is America damnit! If we want to drive big, unsafe cars, that's our right! Ok... Honestly, don't know enough about him to make a truely informed decision. Tho, my mother likes him, and since we disagree on everything, that may be a strike against him.

Buchanan - Sorry, I like my Nazis in Germany, in a ditch, on fire... Now, that's fun... I mean, that's funny. (Bonus points if you identify the quote.) As you can tell from the above, I don't like the man, or his politics. And before anyone asks, I do actually consider myself Christian....

A vote for Bush is not a vote against Gore, it's a vote for an idiot.

So? So was a vote for Reagan. His presidency worked because he knew what he didn't know. And got good people in to help him cover his ass in that regard.

When you pick your candidate, you are choosing someone to represent you. There aren't any boxes on the ballot that say "I hate Al". You pick who you want. If you want to pick "I'm with stupid", that's fine, but don't play like that's not what you're doing.

I know exactly what I'm doing. I'm voting for the person I see as the least objectionable candidate.

If you really don't want to vote for an asshole, then pick someone else... write yourself in if you have to.

And how do you know I'm not an asshole? By saying that I'm not, you're disagreeing with most of my family.

Likewise, I don't know that Bush is an asshole. I've never met him or had an in-depth conversation with the man. I don't trust first impressions, after all, I thought that Clinton might be good president that first six months or so...

It'd be nice if there were a "None of the above" option, but we don't have that, and voting for one wanker "against" the other wanker is hardly a substitute.

But at least I get to choose which wanker... If I didn't have a choice, then it might be different.

I'm voting the way I am because there really isn't a viable third party candidate. Hell, I don't think that Nader or Buchanan are even on the ballot in my state...

But, having said that, if there were a third party candidate, who I thought had at least a one in ten chance of winning, I would not only vote for them, I would probably campaign for them. But I want that one in ten. (Bonus points for that quote, too.)

NecroPuppy
---
Godot called. He said he'd be late.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[frankie]

More CFC's are released from one single volcanic eruption than you can dream

Interesting. I have never heard this claim before. Do you have a URL for any peer-reviewed evidence to support this? I see a lot of people throwing out very specific statements with no documentation.

Same question for Maynard -- could you provide a URL for a scientific article worried about global cooling in the 1970s?

Show me the money!

Re:yeah that's the solution

[GooseKirk]

But my take on his 'responsibility' promise is that when he screws up, he'll take the heat for it, unlike the Clintons and Gore who blame all their problems on other people, or a "right wing conspiracy".

Yeah, like the reporter who said unflattering yet true things about him - he was an "asshole". Or all the "alleged" naughty campaign tricks his side was guilty of during the McCain period - Dubya was reallll quick to find people to blame for all that. Have you heard him actually take responsibility for anything he's seriously done wrong so far (like, oh, I dunno, helping to steal millions of dollars from taxpayers during the S&L days), or do you think his whole life up to this point has been one of saintly virtue? He might talk a good game, but when it comes down to it, listen: he'll take the heat the day O.J. does.

I think that the best quote I've heard concerning this was that "Gore talks to people like he's a second grade special education teacher dealing with an exceptionally slow class."

Well... yeah. Now, I'm not saying I think people are stupid, but... no, wait, that's exactly what I'm saying. I'll also say, further, that Dubya would be at the bottom of that particular class.

And you know, I was thinking about this South Carolina flag thing. And you are totally correct: it is a state issue, and the feds have no business sticking their nose into it. I agree. And yeah, I assume it's a small yet... pungent minority who thinks flying the stars-n-bars is a swell idea. But here's my take on it... if George Bush had said something like this:

"Well, I think the federal government has no business getting involved with this issue. It's clearly a matter between the people of South Carolina and their elected state representatives. But I'll tell you what... here's how I really feel about it: Listen, you toothless dumbass backwoods cracker feebs, the Civil War was a HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AGO, and YOU LOST. Don't you think it's about time you, y'know, let it go? Especially considering that pretty much every person on the face of the planet can agree that slavery probably wasn't such a good idea. You don't see many swastikas over at the Reichstag these days, do ya? You know why that is? It's because they're not particularly proud of having an evil, fucked-up past where they killed and/or enslaved a whole lot of people. Surprise! Like, what's next on your list, opening up an Andersonville theme park to celebrate the glory of the Confederacy? And another thing, the next time I'm driving around down here and I see a 73 El Camino toolin' around with a "Nuke the North" bumper sticker, look, I'm running your fuckin' ass off the road with my entire presidential motorcade. Nuke the North. That's pretty funny considering all the ICBM sites there aren't in the South. Like we'd really let a bunch of fuckwits like you at the controls of global thermonuclear destruction. I tell you what - any of 'ya'll' who want to fight the Civil War all over again, you just let me and the Pentagon know the time and place and we'll be more than happy to settle this thing once and for all, alright? Until then, all of you ignorant redneck web-toed David-Duke-votin' sick-motherfuckin' Ned-Beatty-rapin' sons of bitches can just sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up, because the rest of your species is so embarassed by your existence that the only sign of your pathetic lives we ever want to see again is the footnote in the history books that starts: 'Here's an example of a truly despicable people...' ... but, uh, anyway, no, if the people of South Carolina want to fly a confederate flag or swastika or rising sun or Union Jack or whatever on their public buildings, well, that's their business."

I'm telling you, if George W. Bush were to say something like that, not only would I be first in line at the polls to vote for him, I'd paint his portrait all over my car. I'd name my dog after him. Hell, I'd change MY name to George W. in honor of him. But he won't, because either he agrees with the sentiment, which is fucked, or because he's a wuss and he'd rather dodge the question. Either way he's a douchebag. End of story.

Hmmm... I wonder if this'll go in my FBI file?

I wonder if anyone besides you an' me will ever even see these posts? Oh, well. Hope you had as much fun writing them as I did, at least.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[SpryGuy]

A vote for Bush is a vote for The Religious Right. That is enough reason to not vote for him.

That he steadfastly believes that gay people are second-class citizens without any civil rights is another reason to vote against him. (not to mention his hypocracy for supporting Dick Cheney's daughter, who is an open lesbian, but castigating homosexuals in general... idiot)

That he doesn't have a clue, can't form a coherent english sentence, and would be an utter embarassment in any foreign policy negotiations is another reason to not vote for him.

That he seems to be a 'more money for the rich, screw the poor' candidate like Reagan before him, is another reason to vote against him.

That he'd run the risk of stimulating the economy out of control by giving out an immediate tax cut, thus causing interest rates to rise, and not paying down the debt... rather than saving the tax cut for when the economy needed it during the next down-turn, and in the mean-time paying down the debt (and thus reducing the size of the budget by reducing the required interest payments)... he's basically so fiscally irresponsible that there is yet ANOTHER reason to vote against him.

And when it comes to environmentalism? He lets the industry write the laws (talk about getting in bed with special interests) and then makes it optional to adhere to them... leading to Texas as the single most toxic filthy dirty state in the nation. Yet another reason to not vote for Bush.

And fairness? He's jailed thousands and thousands of casual drug users... when he was one himself. He ruins the lives of people for THEIR 'youthful indescressions', while he gets to be rich and run the country. His hypocracy is another reason to vote against him.

His salavating support of the death-penalty... not that I'm against it, but his cavalier use of and reference to, his insistance that no innocent people ever get the chair, his laughing at and mocking of people on death row, and his heading the largest death machine in the nation... another reason to vote against him.

And let's not get into individual rights... he'll champion a corporation over an individual every single time.

And seriously, is Bush (and the religious right) the one you want appointing up to FIVE new Supreme Court Justices? That clueless moron? Gah. A really STRONG reason to vote against Bush.

I vote for the lesser of two evils. I vote for Gore.

- Spryguy

Re:yeah that's the solution

[SpryGuy]

I'd vote for Jesse Ventura in a heart-beat.

I'm damn upset he doesn't want to run. I mean, the very fact he's not falling all over himself to be president tells me that he's the perfect man for the job :-)

- Spryguy

Re:yeah that's the solution

[grappler]

agreed. A matter of policy in this election, that I am surprised Gore is not harping on, is that we need to actively promote alternative energy sources. The more renewable and less polluting, the better. CNG (compressed natural gas) is a much cleaner burning fuel than gasoline which, incidentally, the U.S. has in abundance - and many cars are already made to run on it. The problem is that you usually can't get it at your local gas station. If this were to change, good things (tm) would happen. Solar enery is a very effective option for significantly reducing fuel needed to heat homes. There used to be special tax exemptions for this, but I believe Ronald did away with those when he took office. And it would have made significant headway too. This is Al Gore's chance to really make a difference in this regard and what does he do? Opens up some oil reseves (actually Clinton technically did it). This is idiotic - I would love to see oil prices rise, and rise, and rise, until people start using alternative energy because that's apparently the only way to get it through their thick skulls. Isn't it idiotic how often people complain about the price of gas? It's so insignificant compared to other everyday costs. The price goes up 50 cents or a buck a gallon (which might increase the cost of a driving drip across the country by oh, a hundred dollars) and people start protesting as if it is their god-given right to get cheap, uninterrupted oil from OPEC. sorry, didn't mean to get off on a rant there...

Re:yeah that's the solution

[jridley]

our precious money will be worthless when our species is dead.

They don't care. They will be dead before the rest of us die of pollution/runaway greenhouse effect/whatever, so they don't give a fuck. End of story.

It's very likely that they figure that even if it happens, they can buy anything, including food when there's not enough to go around. If they can get food for themselves and their families, that's all that matters. These people have probably never been in a situation where they couldn't buy whatever they wanted, so they just can't understand it.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[re-geeked]

Ask them to go a few days eating money.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[jallen02]

Sorry It is pretty asanine to state there is nog reenhouse effect, I know it exists I just dont think humans as a whole really add to much effect to it overall.

Jeremy

Re:yeah that's the solution

[jallen02]

Read Here

and and here

It appears I was wrong about the CFC's. The main issue with them appears to be they actually reached the stratosphere.

However those links do point out a few interesting things about how much chemicals things liek the ocean and volcano's generate (Yes its VERY significant) such as sulfur as mnuch as half of the sulfur in the atmosphere comes from colvano's (Liberal statement)

Another thing to point out is the Ozones damn near disappearance over anartica, no one can explain it and were pretty sure humans didnt cause it

Its another one of those "Earth cycles we dont understand" i was talking about.

I just think that we wont contribute very much and who knows maybe 1 or 2 percent is enough to FUCK us all

Maybe it isnt, i dont lose any sleep over it and I give the "environmentalist" approach as much effort as my life can. I wasnt necesarilly trying to be insightful or anything with my comment, its just pretty well known that we understand very little about things such as the weather and the patterns of earth we are a blink in the eye of earth, and I think no matter how bad we fuck things up earth will recover maybe more slowly, but whose not to say dinosaurs did the same thing, whose to say what we are doing is not a natural part of this process we are a part of the planet, thats all my point is that no matter what people say, no one can honestly know for sure, and it didnt take a graduate degree for me to come to this conclusion..

Jeremy

Re:yeah that's the solution

[kleo]

Perhaps Gore is not harping on alternative solutions to fossil fuels because he has $500,000 worth of stock in Occidental Petroleum sitting in a trust fund left to him by his daddy. Just a thought...

Re:yeah that's the solution

[SpryGuy]

I think AIDS, and antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, and other deadly diseases will take care of the over-population thing. Well, that and war. Never mind all the constant ethnic cleansing (aka 'genocide') that seems to be going on every other year.

The human population is a self-balancing system too, you know. Just like the earth's environment. It will find new equalibriums. As it gets more crowded, there will be more disease and war. Food and supply lines will falter, and there will be massive die-offs from starvation. And it will continue until the population falls back to a more sustainable rate, at which point it will start to grow again. Mainly because human being seem to be completely incapable of managing their own reproduction (and consumption)...

- Spryguy

Re:yeah that's the solution

[Yamao]

Good point. I wish I were a moderator today.

By the way, my dad's a meteorologist, and he thinks it's pretty much BS, too. That's not to say that we shouldn't keep it clean, though.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[Eminence]

You are wrong. Simply.

The choice is pretty obvious - either our civilization would develop means to move substantial number of people out of Earth - or our race will perish. There is no other possible solution.

Being careful not to destroy environment is a good attitude but it is not a solution to the problem - it just gives us more time to develop technology necessary to seriously explore space.

Saying that our race is evil because it multiplies and uses natural resources is plainly stupid - unless you are an alien. We don't know of any other intelligent race that we could compare to.

URANOS

Re:yeah that's the solution

[gstovall]

Think "Bladerunner". Gradual migration of best and brightest offworld, with the majority of humanity left to swim in the cesspool.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[pete_townshend]

Earth can take care of itself I think, *shrugs*

Nobody said anything about the Earth not surviving. Of course the Earth will still be around. It's the humans that are going to have the problem...

Re:yeah that's the solution

[Mr. Slippery]

And.. there are those of us who believe that for the most part the "greenhouse effect" is a bunch of BS.

The greenhouse effect is 100% established fact - without it, the planet would be much colder.

The only debate is whether human activity is causing a rise in greenhouse gasses, and causing global warming. And it's not much of a debate; there is a strong scientific consensus that human activity is altering the climate.

More CFC's are released from one single volcanic eruption than you can dream of releasing in your lifetime.

Volcanic eruptions are rare, while there are over 6 billion people on the planet. So your point is?

Earth has its own cycles that we strive very hard to but never can comprehend.

Which is a pretty good reason not to mess with them, no?

Earth can take care of itself I think, *shrugs*

Um, yes, the rock will still be here no matter what we do. And it would be really hard to get rid of all the life that's on it; some fungi and bactera would probably survive anything short of the Sun's death. But if we fuck it up enough, we could take out the ecosystem and ourselves with it.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[Mike Micelli]

Bush - Disagree with a lot of what he says, but he promises to take responsibility for his own actions, and after the last 8 years, we need someone who will say that. Also the only candidate (from a major party) who said that the South Carolina Confederate Flag issue was for South Carolinians alone to decide.

Responsibility for his own actions? Like fessing up to the use of illicit drugs in his youth, right? I don't care that he used drugs, but he should stop lying about it.

Nader - This is America damnit! If we want to drive big, unsafe cars, that's our right! Ok... Honestly, don't know enough about him to make a truely informed decision. Tho, my mother likes him, and since we disagree on everything, that may be a strike against him.

He's as two-faced as they come. Shouts "Down with corporations" while checking his multi-million dollar stock portfolio.

You forgot:

Harry Browne -

As a parent post in this thread said:

The Libertarian party stands an even chance of plunging us into chaos.

Out of chaos comes order. Maybe it's time to get back to basics.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[NecroPuppy]

I still don't believe in voting for the least objectionable candidate who has a certain percentage chance of winning. I believe in voting for someone who represents me... even if that's me, and I'm the only one who votes for me (which I haven't actually done yet, by the way, but I might).

Well, like most people, I like being on a winning side. Nobody really likes saying 'I voted for some schmuck who didn't even place third in our state', they like voting for the winner, or a loser who at least put in a good show.

And I did consider not voting, but that's a cop out, because then I would have no right to bitch when whichever batch of idiots that gets elected screws things up...

The only thing I don't get, though, is that you say you don't agree with a lot of what Dubya says... but somehow the promise to be responsible for his actions resonates with you (say, speaking of which, whatever happened to that cocaine question?). Man, I just don't get it.

I forgot about that coke thing... Hmmm...

But my take on his 'responsibility' promise is that when he screws up, he'll take the heat for it, unlike the Clintons and Gore who blame all their problems on other people, or a "right wing conspiracy".

And who cares about the South Carolina flag (unless, uh, you live there, I guess, and even then it's a pretty goddamn goofy-ass issue to elect a president on)?

Ahhh, but I'm not electing him on that. When the four candidates (Bush, McCain, Gore, and whatshisname) came to South Carolina, both of the Democrats said the flag should come down; whereas both the Republicans said it was for the people of South Carolina to decide. (McCain later recanted this.)

Now, I'm not a racist. I lived across the street from where the flag was flown for a year without even knowing it was there. I honestly could care less about the damn thing. However, I look at the decision, as well as the viewpoints of the candidates, as a state's rights issue. Which power is subserviant to the other? State or federal? The Constitution says that the federal government is subserviant to the states, but for the last few decades, those state's rights have been eroded by a federal government that believes that it knows best.

I would guess that most South Carolinians don't honestly care about the flag either; they just aren't the ones that get on the news.

But! I will say this... Al Gore is nowhere near as funny as Bush, so for sheer entertainment value I suppose you can't go wrong with Dubya.

I think that the best quote I've heard concerning this was that "Gore talks to people like he's a second grade special education teacher dealing with an exceptionally slow class."

Ah, but who am I kidding. I'm writing in Jesse Ventura for president this year. And Hulk Hogan for vice-president.

Please... Rick Flair would be a far better VP choice... :)


NecroPuppy
---
Godot called. He said he'd be late.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[dr_eaerth]

But I'll tell you what... here's how I really feel about it: Listen, you toothless dumbass backwoods cracker feebs, the Civil War was a HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AGO, and YOU LOST. etc, etc.

Brilliant. That's all I have to say here.

--

Re:yeah that's the solution

[carlos_benj]

Do you have a URL for any peer-reviewed evidence to support this? I see a lot of people throwing out very specific statements with no documentation.

To be fair, I didn't see any peer-reviewed evidence at the link you provided. Scientific data with interpretation, but not necessarily what you would require from the 'other side'. I did a quick Google search for both Global cooling and warming and couldn't find anything that strictly met your request for either position. There are plenty of editorials on both sides as well as numerous articles from respected (and not-so-respected) publications.

There seem to be two vocal extremes on the issue and at least one group of self-described 'contrarians' that lie somewhere between. The gist of it is that the data is not conclusive and warming seems to beget cooling which in turn begets warming. There is ample evidence of anthropogenic influence on climate with some trends and anomolies. (gee, sounds like a weather forcast in terms of ambiguity)

Re:yeah that's the solution

[GooseKirk]

I almost missed something, and I've just got to point this out because I agree with it:

but for the last few decades, those state's rights have been eroded by a federal government that believes that it knows best.

Actually, I believe this has been a complaint for a lot longer than just a few decades. But I agree, in general I'm in favor of "state's rights".

But George W., like his father, like Reagan, like Clinton, he's just blowing hot air. Reagan and Bush Sr. were no friends of state's rights - like you said, it's been getting worse the last few decades - so why would Dubya be? It's showbiz, it's a sham. Behind the scenes Dubya isn't any better or worse than Gore, Clinton, Bush Sr., Reagan... it just doesn't make a whole lot of difference. It isn't just a cliche - these guys operate in a world whose principle dynamics are money and power, and ethics and rights and principles are... necessarily flexible. They care about state's rights (and anything else) for about as long as it's useful to them, and if it isn't, bet your ass state's rights are out the window. What I find most amazing about all of it is how many people still buy into the whole ball of nonsense. On the other hand, Jesse Ventura's pretty believable, and he got elected. Say what you will about Jesse (ever notice how "populist" is so often used as an elitist derogatory term?), but I don't get the feeling there's a whole lot of pretense going on there. I got no beef with Jesse voters... you believe in what he says, and it looks like he believes in what he says, cool. To a certain extent, same with McCain. But man... I don't get how anyone could put an ounce of faith into anything Bush or Gore says.

But anyway, yeah, not voting isn't an answer either, because you gotta be able to get all indignant after the election. That's why it's better to vote for, like, the "Natural Law" candidate or something... no matter what happens, you get to act all pissy: "See? See? If everyone would just listen to me and vote Natural Law, this wouldn't have happened... but no, only I know the way things oughta be..." See, don't think of a vote for an unelectable third-party candidate as throwing away your vote - think of it as your ticket to insufferability!

Man, and I just can't figure why my Republican family thinks I'm a dick...

Re:yeah that's the solution

[OverCode@work]

At this point we're talking about the survival of the human species. Money has no meaning in this context - it's an artificial human system, and a pretty lousy one at that.

-John

Re:yeah that's the solution

[Hard_Code]

I'd have to second a previous poster, and say that if you are going to vote *against* Gore, please vote for a third party (I'd persuade you to vote Green, but the Libertarian party also has a sound platform with a different focus, although I disagree with parts). Voting for Bush to spite Gore is like taking money out of the left hand pocket of the Corporate Party and putting it in the right. Either way, they own the government.

IMHO, I think Gore is a slightly less distateful poison than Bush (hence some liberals voting Gore just to spite Bush, the reverse of what you are doing). But why vote for either poison when there are perfectly sound, reasonable third parties? It really is a crime that parties other than the current duopoly are marginalized and silenced (*cough* debates *cough*)...that's not a vibrant democracy, but a stifled and suffocated one.

Re:yeah that's the solution

[Hard_Code]

Well, I'd suggest you vote Nader ;) I don't know all that much about Hagelin, except that his website goes on and on about what a physics supergenius he is. I think Hagelin is probably in the wrong party. The Reform party seems to have coopted Nader's platform against corporate, environmental, and human abuses. Hagelin should probably throw in with the Greens. I think the Green party has a much solid, and mature platform (as opposed to the Reform party "platform" which comes in various conflicting flavors).

Gore has also coopted Nader's platform, speaking out at the convention against big corporations. But we all know both Republicrat candidates are owned by big corporate interests.

The thing I find funniest, is everywhere you go Republicrats are saying "The main thing is: there are clear differences between these candidates", "This election is about two different sets of ideas on the issues", "These two candidates are two distinct choices" - they know themselves that the system is a sham, that the candidates are two facets of the same party, and that it is their burden of proof, through repitition, to subconsciously convince the American population that the candidates are really different and they have a choice that really matters. Hey, you can have any Model-T as long as it's black!!

Re:yeah that's the solution

[Hard_Code]

I second this. You know, I don't consider myself a sandal wearing tree-hugging nut, but I do really think it is stupid that environmentalism is considered radical. It really is dumb. Environmental soundness should not be percieved as radical, but should be the *default* modus operandi. It should be taken for granted. What should be seen as radical is the gigantic amount of waste we create and participate in. Every item you use today, think of how much energy it took to create and will take to dispose of that item. Think of where that energy is coming from. Because it's out of sight it's out of mind.

Saying that we have basically ruined this planet so the solution is to go and exploit another is evidence of this mentality. So is Bush's proposal that to "solve" the energy crises, we should go make more oil rigs in Alaska! Instead, of course, of forcing the energy industry to redeem to us our investment in them to create alternative energy solutions. The absurdity! As the saying goes, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The hammer is conventional, limited natural resource-based energy solutions. The nail is our rapacious and wasteful percieved need for such gratuitous energy and resource consumption.

http://www.adbusters.org/home/

Re:yeah that's the solution

[OverCode@work]

Quite frankly I don't think those with a strong economic interest in pollution will be convinced until it's too late. That will be ironic - our precious money will be worthless when our species is dead.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, of course. But I don't think the reality of the situation will really hit us as a whole until we start feeling the effects of our pollution on a much larger scale than we have so far.

-John

Never underestimate the power of technology

[active8or]

I agree that colonisig is the only way to prevent carastophy for out planet in the future, but this is due to overcrowding.

However, he underestimates the power of technology, as we ca only start to imagin how far we have come in 1000 years. Taking the amount of resources we might harvest from space by that time, I'm convinced we will find a way to reverse such an effect.

From some interesting far future reading: 3001 - The Final Odysse by Arthur C. Clarke, the one and only...


- Knut S.
( Posted in MacOS X Public Beta )

Re:This Mentality

[NuclearArchaeologist]

People who design restictions on consumption have done some thinking for me that I don't apreciate. First they have decided, often with poor justification, that a certian resource needs to be preserved. Second they have decided how much of that resource people really need. Bunk. How many times have we seen the end of fossil fuel predicted in 30 years? How many Malthusian dissaster stories do we have to hear to realize that people simply adapt? The economic consequences of restriction are too great to ignore. Artificial scarcity is abonmible.

The only safe use of resources is maximal. Renuable resources must be gaurded to insure they renew themselves. Non renuable resources should be expoited as fast as the market will bear without craping other things up. Saving them for tomorow imprverishes us today and lessens our ability to plan and adapt.

A good example of this is gassoline taxes. Imagine the drain on the US economy if gassoline were taxed up to $4.00/gallon as it is in Europe. The money collected by government could never compensate for the opertunites lost by individuals, yet consumption would not really decline. You don't see electric cars in Europe do you? I'll bet they use almost as much per capita as we do here in the good old USA after you normalize for population density. All of that money would be beter spent on more basic human needs like shelter and education. Cheap gassoline has a great effect on our economy by encouraging a mobile workforce and real profits the government can tax and have more. I hate my 45 minute drive to work, but I can afford it until I move closer. As a result, I can do my little part in putting 1GW of electricty onto the grid at $0.02/kWhr, while saving up to buy a house and educate planned children. I can get the things I want while providing for others, neat.

Now think about a place like India. Instead of fussing at them to cap their emmisions by reducing consumption, we should be using our wealth to provide them with cleaner equipment. People there have basic needs like potable water, food and shelter unmet. Who are we to tell them not to exploit their resources?

If some fool wants to spend his money on cars and all that, let them. I'd rather mitigate such behavior by education and ridicule than by laws. Leave people free to persue what makes them happy and things will work themselves out. His loss is my loss, and yours too.

You might also note that some people recomending that everyone reduce consumption have no problems living it up. You might rember the Clinton Administration flying two 747s on a pleasure tour, I mean environmental tour, of the whole freaking world. Some animals are more equal than others.

We should always try to provide more for people rather than restrict them.

Re:I'd hate to see the Earth become unihabitable..

[Sloppy]

Expect a call from your local Iomega salesman.

---

Re:Plutonium dangers overrated

[GlenRaphael]

The last I heard, current Uranium reserves will supposedly last well over 100 years at the current burn rate.

Very true... at the current burn rate. But that's not what was being discussed, now was it? I'm talking about REPLACING our existing fossil fuel sources with nuclear power. Uranium is a limited resource just like fossile fuels, and thus doing this doesn't solve the problem anyway!

I'm sorry, but your information is not correct. There is enough nuclear fuel around to last us for thousands of years, easily. Where are you getting your estimates from? Here's a page from John McCarthy's Sustainability of Human Progress FAQ:

-=-=-
How long will nuclear energy last? These facts come from an articleBernard Cohen.

Nuclear energy, assuming breeder reactors, will last for several billion years, i.e. as long as the sun is in a state to support life on earth.

Here are the basic facts.

1. In 1983, uranium cost $40 per pound. The known uranium reserves at that price would suffice for light water reactors for a few tens of years. Since then more rich uranium deposits have been discovered including a very big one in Canada. At $40 per pound, uranium contributes about 0.2 cents per kwh to the cost of electricity. (Electricity retails between 5 cents and 10 cents per kwh in the U.S.)

2. Breeder reactors use uranium more than 100 times as efficiently as the current light water reactors. Hence much more expensive uranium can be used. At $1,000 per pound, uranium would contribute only 0.03 cents per kwh, i.e. less than one percent of the cost of electricity. At that price, the fuel cost would correspond to gasoline priced at half a cent per gallon.

3. How much uranium is available at $1,000 per pound?

   There is plenty in the Conway granites of New England and in shales in Tennessee, but Cohen decided to concentrate on uranium extracted from seawater - presumably in order to keep the calculations simple and certain. Cohen (see the references in his article) considers it certain that uranium can be extracted from seawater at less than $1000 per pound and considers $200-400 per pound the best estimate.

   In terms of fuel cost per million BTU, he gives (uranium at $400 per pound 1.1 cents , coal $1.25, OPEC oil $5.70, natural gas $3-4.)

4. How much uranium is there in seawater?

   Seawater contains 3.3x10^(-9) (3.3 parts per billion) of uranium, so the 1.4x10^18 tonne of seawater contains 4.6x10^9 tonne of uranium. All the world's electricity usage, 650GWe could therefore be supplied by the uranium in seawater for 7 million years.

5. However, rivers bring more uranium into the sea all the time, in fact 3.2x10^4 tonne per year.

6. Cohen calculates that we could take 16,000 tonne per year of uranium from seawater, which would supply 25 times the world's present electricity usage and twice the world's present total energy consumption. He argues that given the geological cycles of erosion, subduction and uplift, the supply would last for 5 billion years with a withdrawal rate of 6,500 tonne per year. The crust contains 6.5x10^13 tonne of uranium.
7. He comments that lasting 5 billion years, i.e. longer than the sun will support life on earth, should cause uranium to be considered a renewable resource.

Comments:

• Cohen neglects decay of the uranium. Since uranium has a half-life of 4.46 billion years, about half will have decayed by his postulated 5 billion years.
• He didn't mention thorium, also usable in breeders. There is 4 times as much in the earth's crust as there is uranium.
• He did mention fusion, but remarks that it hasn't been developed yet. He has certainly provided us plenty of time to develop it.

The main point to be derived from Cohen's article is that energy is not a problem even in the very long run. In particular, energy intensive solutions to other human problems are entirely acceptable.

-=-=-

Re:I never would have thought

[SpryGuy]

Um... wide-scale weather problems can really disrupt food sources. Remember the dust-bowl back in the 30's? Do you think dramatic climate change would have any less of a dramatic impact on our food sources? Do you think the drought in Texas this year has has NO impact on food sources? Are you that naive? Humankind is not THAT powerful before the forces of nature...

- Spryguy

Re:This Mentality

[OmniDude]

Allright, not surprisingly you are a freedom fundamentalist and rhetorically very well founded at that. However your argumentation is flawed and IMO you and your peers' position poses a threat to us all, because your go-get-it-at-any-price attitude tend to place you in positions of power:

About freedom in general: I agree that having your freedom limited is a pain and should be kept at a minimum, but as you will know it's a everyday experience that just can't be eliminated if we are to function as a society. Urban speed limits, tax payment and social conventions at your workplace - to name a few - are limitations on your freedom that you just have to accept to function properly among your fellow man. So absolutism regarding freedom just isn't a coherent position, unless you advocate predatorial jungle law.

Regarding the distinction between renewable and limited resources: The distinction doesn't hold in practice on larger scales. Take oil, commonly considered a limited ressource. There is a hell of a lot of oil on Earth, but most of it isn't accessible because it isn't economically feasible to extract. As prices go up and technology advances, more will become available and when all crude oil depots have been depleted, we turn to shale extraction. We can have oil for as long as we want as long as we're prepared to pay the price.
Same goes for solar or wind energy. These forms aren't nearly as effective, so the extraction facilities are quite spacedemanding. If India and Russia is to attain a western standard of living, we would run out of energy sources before the next turn of a century. The point is no energy source is available to us in unlimited quantities. No surprise here.
However, this is the crucial question: When will the price be too high? When are we are "crapping other things up"? Some might say sometime in the future and leave it at that. They tend to demand bulletproof evidence before they reluctantly act. Others will say we have already reached that point long time ago and we need to brake as hard as possible to avoid "a Malthusian disasters". Ozone holes and radical global warming, to name a few. They tend to advocate radical limitations that would destabilize economies, causing serious negative impact on (western) societies.
My suggestion is just that we adopt a cautious approach to how we interact with our environment (in the broadest sense of the world). That's what I mean by better safe than sorry. I have as much faith in the inventive capabilities of man as you do, and almost as little faith as you in our ability to judge long term effects. So when a plausible scientific scenario make the alarm bells go, I think the right attitude is "proceed with caution" rather than "we'll cross that bridge once we get to it", cause energy and environmental habits are not quickly or easily changed.

The world does not play like Doom, where the best strategy is full speed ahead, guns ablazing, cause there's no save or replay options.
***

Re:Gross is all you need sometimes.

[X]

Actually, if you read through that data your original statement doesn't bear out. You said:

An increase in wealth equals a decrease in population growth rate.

Which is quite different from what these graphs demonstrate. Instead, what they suggest is that at a certain point of development, death rates drop off. After a time, societies react to that and birth rates drop off proportionately. Net result: growth rates stabalize in the long run.

The last paper in particular breaks the chart in to 4 stages, and clearly suggests that the transition from stage 1 to stage 2 results in a pretty dramatic growth rate. So, in that case, an increase in wealth equals a huge increase in growth.

A better way to describe this theory is that the transition to modern times destabilizes whatever societal balances exist between birth and death, resulting in a huge rate of growth, which is then inevitably corrected by society.

Oh, and most of the studies are talking about how "developed" a society is as opposed to how wealthy. The last study correlates the two, although only with a grand brush. There is certainly the possibility of becoming developed without becoming wealthy or vice-versa.

When you look at it like that (where Stage 1 & Stage 4 have similar growth rates) you can't be quite so sure where some societies will be in the long run. Some societies had impressive growth rates before the 18th century when this whole process started. Presumably, they will return to this level of growth at some point.

Too good to be true too?

[OmniDude]

I've got to admit that as far as documentation goes, you really got this thing down, GlenRaphael. I think I might be convinced if you can answer just a few more questions:

Q1: How does the cost of long-term storage of the non-reusable endproduct of nuclear waste affect the economy of nuclear produced power?
I mean one thing is that your breeding reactors can use nuclear fuel more efficiently and your reprocessing plants can even recycle some of it. You still have the problem of contamination of non-fuel elements of the plant that continually produces radioactive waste and eventually leads to the closing of the plant. Safe disposal of the involved mass of low-rad material is far from unproblematic.
Here in Denmark we've never had nuclear power, but we did get a small experimental nuclear plant for research (10 MW). After 40 years (and a few minor leakage accidents..) the plant needs to be shut down. Price estimate: 100 million $! Without doing any number-crunching, that seems pretty steep to me. And that's just the shutdown price. Add to that construction and maintenance costs and it start to be really hard to see how this could have been economically sound, even if the reactor had been bigger and a commercial powerplant. And then there is the problem of finding sufficiently large and stable underground depositories. I mean, we don't have a suitable bedrock underground. Perhaps you americans would care to take it off our hands? We'll pay you - say 40$ a pound?

Q2: If nuclear power is really that unproblematic how come the political winds currently goes against it?
Please, don't tell me that it is just due to ignorance. I'm pretty sure that if the politicians had their eyes on the solution of a apparently really nasty waste problem with conventional fuels and a practically undepletable (is that a word?) source of energy, they would not be discouraged by even half the populations "misinformed" protest. I mean, raising taxes isn't exactly popular, but that doesn't seem to hold them back, now does it?



***

Re:Too good to be true too?

[GlenRaphael]

Q1: How does the cost of long-term storage of the non-reusable endproduct of nuclear waste affect the economy of nuclear produced power?

Okay, there's high-level stuff, there's low-level stuff, and there's the plant itself. The high-level stuff left after reprocessing (eg, the fuel rods) is pretty nasty but relatively easy to contain because there's so little of it. The low-level stuff (eg, used gloves) involves more mass but is still a tiny amount of material compared to the solid ash generated by a coal-burning plant and involves relatively little risk. It should probably be handled much like medical waste.

As for shutdown expenses, building or decommissioning a research reactor tends to be a lot more expensive than a production one, because it's a one-of-a-kind design and you want to use the opportunity to test different techniques. Shutting down TMI was horrendously expensive because they chose to look at it as a research opportunity rather than an engineering project; I assume your plant was similar. But when you make a lot of nuclear plants of the same design, there are some nice economies of scale so building them up, refurbishing them and breaking them down isn't nearly as bad as when every one is different.

France and Japan chose the "make them all the same" model. America chose the "make them all different" model, which in retrospect was a big lose; the gains to be had from always using the latest technology didn't make up for the costs and risks of everything being non-standard. France accidentally picked the right strategy and the right time to implement it, so now they are pretty happy with nukes providing 80% of their power.

Q2: If nuclear power is really that unproblematic how come the political winds currently goes against it?

I suspect it's just your standard interest-group political game. Concentrated benefits, dispersed costs. There currently exist many large politically-savvy lobbying groups that stand to lose from any sort of switch in power-production strategies. For instance, the British coal-miners union. Or the entire state of Texas. :-)

Nuclear is an obvious win for countries that import all their fuel (France), or are starting essentially from ground zero (China). But when there are a bunch of entrenched interests invested in some other technology, the case has to be pretty compelling to force a change. And right now oil is _so_ cheap and available that the practical case for doing something else isn't all that strong.

In the long run relying on nuclear power is probably inevitable, but that doesn't mean we need to adopt it any time soon. There's no particular hurry. Heightened concern over greenhouse gases is the latest thing pushing us in that direction.

My God tells me otherwise!

[sg_oneill]

This would also keep us in compliance with both of the mandates that God gave us at the creation of life, i.e.
1. Go forth
2. And multiply

Nutter. God didn't give me that commandment. She gave it to you. Sure though, spread your seed if that's what turns you on. Perhaps a connie might help stave off the HIV however.

And yeah I'm a sarcastic prick sometimes.

Re:This Mentality

[NuclearArchaeologist]

You don't know what full bore is. The bridges have been crossed.

As an advocate of nuclear energy, I've seen excessive caution cause great harm. It's funny that you should claim that there are no infinite energy sources. In fact, there are. A clear sucession of forms of nuclear energy production has been well understood for about 60 years, yet the US has foolishly decided to pervert the first stage and halt the second stage alltogether. The result is a fuel cycle that will deplete the world's supply of uranium in a few hundred years, and dependence on fosil fuels with all of their negative environmental consequences.

Breeder reactors, by producing more fuel than they consume, could generate enough electricity for everyone to live at a US standard for thousands of years. Two flawed arguements were given to kill them, waste disposal and wepons proliferation. Waste disposal is a non issue when you consider fuel reprocessing which seperates long and short lived fision products. Short lived fision products decay in a few hundred years, and can easily be contained in sturctures built by men. The longer lived isotopes are generally fuel and should not be thrown away. Deneying the world the benifits of nuclear power has not prevented weapons proliferation and it should not be expected to.

Why is this? It might be that such plants are not in the best interest of companies that currently produce power generating equipment. It might be that such people would also recomend deregulation and distributed power generation. You should look to such hidden interests when people recomend restrictions on consumption. The collective interests of the world do not always lead their advocates to power. I'm not getting anywhere fast.

The freedom to swing your fist ends where someone else's nose begins. I do not call for any price exploitation, but full use of availale tools to maximize social benifit. Reasonable laws to protect resources do not conflict with proper expoitation. Consumption side restrictions always cause harm.

Re:Plutonium dangers overrated

[SpryGuy]

Sorry but I cannot believe your information. I trust the PBS specials on the topic I saw over some poster I don't even know. Uranium is STILL a depletable resource just like fossile fuels, and there is less of it on the planet than fossil fuels, and the huge energy density of fossile fuels takes a lot to replace. All of the information I gleened from those sources made intutive sense, and was backed by many experts and scientists in the field of energy. If you immediately replaced ALL power production with nuclear power, it wouldn't last any longer than fossil fuels, and probably not AS long... and would be more expensive on top of it all.

- Spryguy

Re:The demise of mankind is ok

[naasking]

In fact, we should speed the development by not breeding anymore. Or to be more extreme, hastening the end voluntarily.

Sure! You go first... I'll be right behind ya. :-)

-----
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"

Re:Plutonium dangers overrated

[GlenRaphael]

"Uranium is STILL a depletable resource just like fossile fuels, and there is less of it on the planet than fossil fuels, and the huge energy density of fossile fuels takes a lot to replace."

Fossil fuels have a huge energy density compared to wood or solar or hydro, but they don't hold a candle to nuclear power. Nuclear fuel is more efficient by many orders of magnitude. If you're producing a thousand times as much energy per unit mass, you don't need very much unit mass to produce a lot of energy.

I don't know when your "PBS specials" were recorded, but I suspect it was more than ten years ago. It used to be the conventional wisdom in the '70s and '80s that we were likely to run out of natural sources of uranium soon. This is why France invested in breeder reactors and reprocessing, because they wanted to be self-sufficent and didn't want to substitue dependency on limited foreign uranium supplies for dependency on limited foreign oil supplies. But the anticipated uranium shortage never materialized. Just as with the often-anticipated oil shortages, we just kept getting better at finding more as the need arose.

I trust the PBS specials on the topic I saw over some poster I don't even know.

You don't have to trust me on any of this. Just look it up for yourself. Do a Google search or something. Or follow the links I've been giving you and check their sources.

Re:Plutonium dangers overrated

[SpryGuy]

The specials in question (which had to do with global warming, the weather, and carbon emissions) were recorded this year, and were broadcast just this past spring, if I remember correctly.

And sorry I don't trust some of your sources. These are some of the same sources that said 'duck and cover' was a good defense in the case of nuclear attack.

Nuclear power is simply not the answer, your protestations to the contrary. It may help a little, but there are very high costs, and serious issues with waste desposal (regardless of your attempts to poo-poo them).

Besides, nuclear power doesn't do much to help our transportation industry... battery driven cars don't currently have much range, pep, and are very costly... and unless you're advocating putting nuclear reactors in individual vehicles, that's about the only method of transfering nuclear power to one of the largest uses of fossil fuels today.

I'm more interested in fuel-cell and fusion research for helping to satisfy our needs in 30-80 years time. At least with fusion, the chances of a meltdown/china-syndrome are non-existant, and there isn't near the problem with waste disposal. Unfortunately there's no real indication that it will ever be a viable source of energy, but I'm willing to fund the research until there's an absolute indication one way or another.

- Spryguy

Re:The End Is Almost Near

[DickBreath]

I completely agree with him, if business does not take control of the people who are spewing their own opinions into the environment, there will be no way to redefine clean air or clean water in a few hundred years.

It's a marketing problem of gigantic proportions. Marketing must convince people to feel good about the state of our clean air and water. Yet still create the need (to pay us). It will be difficult to productize.

Follow the link . . .

[lbredeso]

http://www.heartland.org/studies/ieguide.htm#1

NASA is already on it.

[sherpajohn]

As you can see, they are skipping PDA's at NASA, and going right for PSA's. Imagine one of these connected to the web. Actually, I have heard they are considering web access from the space station, and that a Universal Wide Web is in the works, but for the life of me, can't find anything about it on the NASA Sites.

Going on means going far

Re:NASA is already on it.

[jwit]

It's still in beta. They haven't figured out a work-around for the 120 second RTT in the ftp protocol. (ftp'ing to the University of Mars wouldn't work!)

Already have a house on Mars

[ackthpt]

Not much of a view, can't ski, no place to swim, takes forever to get a tan, dust all over the place. On the plus side, I found this really cool, like all-terrain skateboard which looks like it was made from Erector Set, but had to strip all this extra electronic junk off it.




--
Chief Frog Inspector

Y3K

[Fredge]

Having spent 3 years of my life working on the Y2K problem, I can honestly say I don't envy the engineers who will have to fix the Y3K problem AND keep the human race from going the way of the dinosaurs.

Re:Ever Titrate 20 trillion gallons?

[Stoutlimb]

Agreed, the oceans could change overnight. I certainly hope not. We better be careful.

As for China, they're passing laws to control their population, with some success. They're also becoming richer. An increase in wealth equals a decrease in population growth rate. This is common knowlege to any high school social sciences teacher. This is the glimmer of the natural mathematical push towards the steady state. I don't claim that as any sort of proof, just some supportive evidence to an unproved theory.

If you take any complex system, and throw it into disarray (as we are doing), one of a few things could happen.

1) It will continue to fluctuate all over the place wildly for a very long time. (Napster good! Chaos bad!)

2) It will settle down into a predictable pattern or state that is uninhabitable to us. (Hawkings prediction, bad.)

3) It will settle down into a predictable pattern or state that is habitalbe, or even good for us. (This is most desirable.)

If we want to pick door number three, we better find natural rules that reinforce that good state. The (commonly accepted) rule of demographic transition is one, but I'm not sure it's enough. Captialism is a good rule that keeps greed somewhat under check, but it might work against us. I think (hope) there are more of those good rules out there.

If not... I think we better do as Hawking says, and get our butts off this planet. I'm sure he knows all about the possiblility of a steady state for us, but he's smart enough to know it's not a SURE THING (TM). So he tells us to get our butts off the planet as fast as possible. Good insurance plan.

He's a smart guy.
He's speaking to the dumb masses.
Us smart guys (?!?) know you don't tell end users all the details, they'll just get confused and do the wrong thing. If you told a politician your "steady state" theory, he'd choose that and not spend dollars on an insurance plan in space.

DOOM AND GLOOM WILL SAVE US!
Bork! Bork! Bork!

Re:He's got a point

[MissingFrame]

I won't miss the flies.

I'm sure that's what all the people moving to America thought ... most likely, you'll bring that with you!

Re:I'm so glad!

[Paul Sheridan]

It's a timescale issue, physical changes of that magnitude would take evolution hundreds of millenia, according to Hawking we've got a thousand years at the most.

Steven hawking easily duped by penguin.

[tippergore]

How can he be trusted when things like This Happen?
I don't think he can, I just don't think he can.

Look, renowned cosmologist stephen hawking! GET HIM!

nice to wake up to

[gtx]

it's nice to wake up to this kinda news

"and by the way, your race probably won't survive on this planet for another thousand years, quite possibly less"

well i sure am in a good mood now!

Madness!

[NullAndVoid]

Hawking is mad! The next thing you know he'll be building a rocket to put his son, Kal-el, into just before Kryp^H^H^H^HEarth is destroyed! Let's all just ignore him!

No, it's right

[Anne Marie]

You men have ruled for long enough. Witness the dawn of the other half of the species, at least for three weeks out of the month. ;-)

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[spankfish]

I agree we should care more about space exploration, but I disagree with Hawking. Mother Earth is stronger then we even know.

Maybe so, but never underestimate the power of human stupidity. We only learn the hard way. It took a monster the size of Hitler to make us realise that something as horrible as genocide is bad. What will it take for us to realise that our current course of action is bad?

Global warming? Tell that to me when I am freezing my arse off in record cold this winter (notice you never hear about global warming in the middle of winter, at least in the US).

Global warming is a simplication. While the overall average effect is that the planet is warming up, on a local scale weather is getting more chaotic. You will get warmer spots and colder spots and in general, shit gets more unpredictable. We are adding more entropy into the system.

Global warming is a farce. Several respected Meteorologists have dissmissed this as BUNK!

Care to name them?

If we ARE the cause of global warming, then, how come the trend of rising temps occured BEFORE cars have been invented???

The Industrial Revolution. You may have heard of it. During this time, the Thames river in London was so polluted that the river itself caught fire.

It's CYCLICAL! Just like El Nino. The earth is stronger then ANY one being on this planet (ok, except GOD!! ).

As much as I pity smug prats such as yourself, I hope that those assholes who are destroying the Amazon basin dig up a virus like Ebola, with a latency period of three months, just for you and all your complacent friends.

--

Re:Oh, no

[11223]

Here's a hint: The first story screwed everything up, and it took the second to correct for everything. They're not necessary. The third, however, was an excellent book, but not "great" (however that's defined) like Foundation.

That's a great sig. Maybe I'll use it?

It's a question of man's adaptability.

[NecronomiconII]

I've found, that given any situation, man seems the most adept at surviving. Meaning that if all of a sudden impeding doom loomed upon us, you can best your ass there would be a massive shift from a capitalist society to a surivialist. It's pretty amazing what people can do when it's live or die. So the planet moves to a massive shift in heat, we adapt stil-suits like that in Dune. I'm sure alot of the population would die off, but I doubt it would be the end of us. We have that adaptability edge.

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[sammy baby]

For instance, I doubt we'd take the figure skaters... :)

What about Brian Boitano?

Re:He's got a point

[saider]

I'd like to move to Mars. Getting away from the government and megacorps would be good with me.

Who is going to build the spaceship to carry your ass to the next planet? Who is going to develop the habitation modules on the next planet? Who is going to give you a job when you get to the next planet?

You've been watching too much Star Trek, man. If anything, a move like this will only strengthen government's and industry's hold on us. All us little folks (who cant afford the $55 million to pay for the trip and a house on Mars) would become indentured servants for the rest of our lives.

Re:What MC Hawking conveniently left out...

[jszep]

Can you say "Doctor Strangelove"?

Perpetual Cynic

[jabber01]

My respect for S.H. not withstanding... Future prediction is not exactly Hawking's field. Methinks the good doctor's concerns are a way of getting/keeping his name in the press and that he is trolling for a research grant.

On a less (or more) cynical note though, I hope this is all part of the concerted effort among scientists (asteroid impacts and global warning) to play-up the level of public FUD, thereby forcing the politicians to allocate more money on scietific research - keeping folks like S.H. employed in an age of Corporatism.

The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196

Re:Plutonium dangers overrated

[GlenRaphael]

The [PBS] specials in question (which had to do with global warming, the weather, and carbon emissions) were recorded this year, and were broadcast just this past spring, if I remember correctly.

With that in mind, I just surfed over to PBS.org to see if I could find any material on nuclear power that might substantiate your half-remembered claims. The first thing I found was a Frontline special called "Nuclear Reaction: why do Americans fear nuclear power?". Here's the link to their FAQ. So here's what Frontline's Q&A says about the toxicity of plutonium:

Q: What is plutonium? Is it a metal like uranium?

A: Plutonium is, in fact, a metal very like uranium. If you hold it [in] your hand (and I've held tons of it my hand, a pound or two at a time), it's heavy, like lead. It's toxic, like lead or arsenic, but not much more so.

Q: How can plutonium harm you?

A: You have to eat it in order to harm yourself with it. It is radioactive, naturally. Radioactive, but much less so than radium, for example, which is scattered again all over the earth's crust. So it's not a very frightening material.

Q: So you say you hold it in your hand. What about the radiation that is emitted by plutonium?

A: The radiation from plutonium tends to be very easily stopped by any kind of shielding around the plutonium. A pair of gloves, paper. Certainly, a thin film of steel will stop the radiation from plutonium, so that it's perfectly safe.

Q: Is the skin on your hand is enough to shield yourself from plutonium's radiation?

A: The skin on your hand is probably sufficient to stop most of it.

Q: We've all heard that it's the most toxic substance in the world. Isn't it?

A: Well, I think it's absurd. It's not toxic. As I say, it's no more toxic than any other heavy metal, and its radioactivity is very considerably less than many other things that are on the earth's surface. It's an absurd statement.

The other parts of the Q&A seem to back up what I was saying elsewhere. Read the part on why a political moratorium on reprocessing created the U.S. waste problem which would otherwise not be much of a big deal. Now you might say that this is an interview with somebody who is part of the pro-nuclear establishment. To which I would respond that this is the interview FrontLine chose to feature as a definitive FAQ, and FrontLine is a PBS show presumably on equivalent standing with other PBS shows you may have seen on the subject. Perhaps more so since this is a show that featured nuclear power as its primary issue rather than as a side issue to some other topic. Here's the topmost page; the other interviews they did are illuminating as well. (they made Nader look a bit silly, if you ask me...)

[surfs a bit more...]

Okay, I think I might have found your alternative source. It's a Nova episode on global warming called "What's up with the weather: beyond fossil fuels". Here's the topmost link and here is the FAQ section. If you read it carefully you'll find some support for your position but you'll also see that most of what they are saying is perfectly compatible with what my sources have said. It's pretty clear that Hoffert isn't all that interested in nuclear power, which is fine. He takes it as a given that we won't use breeder reactors or allow reprocessing in the U.S. any time soon due to political constraints, some of which he agrees with. Given those constraints and his assumptions about what a "cost effective price" is, his conclusions follow.

This probably concludes our debate. Surf the PBS links I just gave you for a while if you need any more clarification of the issues pro or con.

Re:Plutonium dangers overrated

[SpryGuy]

That's not the show I was thinking of... I believe the title had more to do with the weather, global warming, and/or carbon emissions.

And that whole plutonium thing (sorry, but after decades of hearing it's the most toxic dangerous substance known to man, it'll take more than one article to tear through all that) doesn't address my main point, which is the expense, over all danger (all things considered, including potential worst-case scenereos), and the fact that it doesn't help in the areas we desperately need help, with regards to energy.

I'd say that you and people who truely believe what you've posted (I'm reserving judgement just due to the sheer weight of counter-claims that have been made over the decades, and I HAVE read up on this stuff from time to time, following it in popular scientific press and such) have a LOT of work cut out for you. If indeed the common knowledge about all this is either misrepresentation, misperception, or out-right lies, it's going to take a lot of respectable people making a LOT of noise to over-come all that has gone before. Unfortuantely, posting here reaches a VERY small audience (especially posting here more than 18 hours after an article first becomes available... most people just read through once).

Good luck in your efforts.

- Spryguy

Re:Plutonium dangers overrated

[GlenRaphael]

SpryGuy,

Thank you for pointing out the PBS references, I'll probably use them as my primary source the next time this issue comes up. By the way, I don't know if you've been following the links I gave, but we now have a reasonable source for your "it doesn't solve the whole problem" claim and for my refutation of it. According to the interview with Hoffert, if we don't use breeder reactors to recycle our nuclear fuel, the U.S. only has a ten-year supply of reactor-grade uranium.

But, Hoffert also says with breeders we could use uranium 100 times as effectively as our current light-water reactors. 100 times 10 years gives us a thousand years of power at the current rate of production using the uranium we can extract at current prices. So even Hoffert, an "alternative fuels" advocate for PBS/Nova, is basically agreeing with my other sources that nuclear power DOES solve the resource issue.

The reason he dismisses it anyway is: (1) breeder reactors produce plutonium, and he's afraid of terrorists getting it to build bombs. (2) Breeders take a while (he says 20 years) to make a significant amount of fuel. So I guess we'd have to borrow some plutonium from France and Japan while waiting for our own production capacity to come on line. :-)

With regard to "help in the areas we desperately need help", (1) if we replace coal-burning plants with nukes, we'll reduce greenhouse emissions and smog. (2) We could use nuclear plants to charge those fuel cells you mentioned in the next generation of cleaner cars. We'll need SOME power source to charge them, so why not pick one that will last a while and doesn't pollute the air?

Until next time,

Glen

Re:Plutonium dangers overrated

[Wellspring]

Is there any way we can give a whole thread a +1 Informative/Insightful/Interesting?

SpryGuy and GlenRaphael just made a great series of posts on nuclear power-- tons of information presented for and against.

Just so both of you know-- plenty of us were reading this! And if you didn't catch it yet, click here to read it. Really good series of posts, each moderated at 1 when they ALL deserve a 5. It was last week, so I guess this post is in vain, but who knows?

global warming is FOR REAL

[maynard]

P.J. O'Rourke talked about this in his books, Parliment of Whores and All the Trouble in the World.

Environmentalism is a special interest group. However, it tries to go beyond that by appeals such as "the environment affects everyone", which is true. I don't disagree with environmentalism per se, but when the environmental groups make statements such as, "...the environment must be preserved, regardless of cost..." you have to wonder what part of it they are smoking.

Now, as far a global warming, and the like goes, does anyone here remember what the big environmental scare of the 70s was?

Global cooling.

And guess what you could do then to prevent global cooling, and stop those glaciers from crashing down on us? The exact same things that are being touted as the cures for global warming.

Quoting a political pundit for scientific evidence supporting or to the contrary of any position is a quick walk to demagoguery. Whatever the long term consequences of fossil fuel energy production and other environmental assaults, it's doubtful P. J. O'Rourke has much to say that's relevant.

That said, there's significant evidence of large scale global change, not about to happen but happening right now. For example:

• species all over the world are migrating from equatorial regions to the poles as the climate warms. This includes birds, insects, mammals, rodents; you name it. The important point is that it crosses species boundaries across the globe.
  
• Polar ice cores and tree rings give us the historical perspective you suggest we lack. A reading of ice cores across many thousands of years conclusively state that our planet has never (within the period recorded) seen this level of atmospheric carbon levels change in such a short period of time.
  
• The polar ice caps are melting and breaking up and flowing out to sea. These are some of the largest ice bergs in recorded history. To whit, many pacific islands are flooding from the rising sea levels. Entire countries are disappearing under the sea.
  
• Methane trapped in the polar regions as ice are melting at an alarming rate. Methane traps significantly more heat in the atmosphere than just carbon, and could on it's own lead to catastrophic global warming.
  

On the point about global cooling, this is ALSO a possible outcome simply because changing a stable system cause unpredictable outcomes; similar to the butterfly effect often widely discussed.

Never mind the global consequences of unregulated energy production from fossil fuels. The fact is that we're running out and NO ONE is proposing sensible solutions toward sustainable energy production.

Coal/oil/natural gas are out, for obvious reasons. Fissionables are out, not only is it unreasonably dangerous but we don't have anywhere near enough uranium to provide the 10 terawatts/year our world now consumes. Photovoltaic is out, it costs more energy to produce a solar cell (with current technology) than it will ever produce across it's lifetime. This leaves:

• Solar steam (directed sunlight at a water reserve to turn a steam turbine. Very efficient, though an intermittent supply.
  
• Wind. Like Solar it's intermittent, but it's also highly efficient.
  
• Geothermal. Doable now in certain areas, some scientists are looking into the possibility of drilling down far enough to hit mantle and tap thermal heat directly. This looks quite promising.
  
• Fusion. Who the hell knows?
  
• In addition, coal could be used for the next few hundred years (until we run out) if we can figure out how to cheaply cap the carbon output and bury the materials safely.

This is for real dude. I hate to break the news, but our children are in serious trouble if we don't act now. And unfortunately, our politicians are too busy taking bribes to bother with their primary responsibilities to their citizens and constituents.

Re:global warming is FOR REAL

[tommyq]

Sources please?

Hawking is out of his field

[Coward Anonymous]

People with an authorative status in one field of knowledge often try carrying over their authority into other fields in which they are far from being experts.
It's a common sight these days and sadly Hawking fell for it too.
Hawking is a physicist and cosmologist and although these may give him a better understanding of earth dynamics relative to the average lay man he is far from being an authority on the subjects of the earth's atmosphere and global warming.
I also think it is very revealing that he came out with such a sensationalist declaration. If it were so blatantly obvious (something on the scale he describes would be) then he wouldn't be the first to say it.
I'd say he's just cynically stirring up some PR for something...

Re:yeah RIGHT.

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is, Hawking has proposed a cause, which is quite evident to anyone who does not deliberately blind themselves to it. We are choking on our own wastes. No one who has ever looked at a sewer or a polluted river or suffered the effects of a bad air day can pretend that the stuff doesn't exist. Other predictions were based on supernatural, hysterical, or religous causes, none of which could be confirmed or verified. This can.

Re:Who cares if its hot and acid!

[jbarnett]

"Uh dammit, chuck do you have a backup?"

"Uh *AHEM* _you_ are the backup admin. Why do you need a backup?"

"No reason, I think I took out about a billion people"

"Dammit, it is your job to make back ups of these things, and DAMMIT stop playing Quake 3 on the main server, you are eating cpu cycles into the human thought, half these people are having "brain farts" right now. Where did you learn unix system admin?"

"This is Unix?"

Space necessary

[Cap'n enigma]

Even though I don't agree that the earth is doomed, I do believe that it is very important that we start using the resources that are available in space. That includes migrating people into space. I saw an estimate one time that by utilizing the space based resources that are availabe, the solar system could support a population a trillion times greater then what now exists on earth.

This would also keep us in compliance with both of the mandates that God gave us at the creation of life, i.e.
1. Go forth
2. And multiply

I do not believe those commands meant to go forth until it got difficult or to multiply until it got to crowded. It is the nature of life to expand and multiply. The movement away from earth out into space is a natural progression.

I also do not believe that it is an accident that, after millenia of living as hunter/gatherers we, developed the ability to move out into space right at the moment in history that it became crucial for the survival of the species.

oh, ho hoooo....Fiction can be fun.

[hammerfied]

Oooo, look at me, I'm Stephen Hawking, I'm so smart, I can make wild predictions about the future with no proof and everyone will believe what I'm saying... Watch this, I can do him one better...I predict that the Earth will be unlivable in 750 years!! Beat that Stephan. And also that, uh, man kind will grow gills and crawl back into the sea sometime before that. Hey, everyone can play, come on you guys, just make up some ridiculous BS and put date on it that will happen hundreds of years after you die..., hey suddenly your Nostradamus...see, it's fun. Linux and Knibb High Football Rules! HAMMER

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[11223]

have power (politicians, etc.)

Yo - they need to be willing to leave. I think that a society on Mars would be near-perfect for the first fifty years because it would be entirely composed of the people who want to live on Mars... of course that runs out when the second generation arrives, but until then...

I shouldn't be spreading these ideas. They're perfect for the next hit RTS game.

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[DickBreath]

Hopefully there would also be room for liberal arts types since we will want a way of life worth preserving.

Hopefully there would be no room for liberal arts types since we will want a way of life worth preserving.

:-)

Re:He's got a point

[dsfox]

Those of us who left would probably be the intelligent ones..

I guess it won't be the modest ones!

Garbage: Bury it at subduction zones

[1010011010]

http://greenwood.cr.usgs.gov/pub/open-file-reports /ofr-99-0132/

Might work. We'd be shoving the garbage into Earth's very hot and very radioactive mantle, where it will be recycled into rock. Why bury it in the valuable lithosphere?

___________________________

Re:Garbage: Bury it at subduction zones

[SpryGuy]

I once heard an interesting solution for how to bury tons of carbon dioxide into the ocean...

The mid-ocean is rather iron-poor and thus doesn't have a lot of plankton and other life that consumes CO2. For whatever reason (I forget the details), it was hypothesized that a huge flotilla of ships broadcasting fine iron powder over large swaths of ocean would cause a plankton bloom that would soak up enormous amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere, then die and sink to the bottom, taking the CO2 with it.

Of course, there are other environmental concerns about doing such a thing, but it was an interesting idea... (did I read it in Discover magazine, or was it Scientific American?)

- Spryguy

Re:Garbage: Bury it at subduction zones

[Leperflesh]

You've been reading too much David Brin.

Subduction is a plate tectonic process that takes millions of years.

Furthermore, much of what is at the very top of a subducting plate gets scraped off onto the overlying continental shelf - the Franciscan Complex of California is an example of the 'melange' that such a process leaves.

The problem with our garbage, on the other hand, is that it will take hundreds or thousands of years, not millions of years, to decompose or otherwise be naturally recycled; most likely, all that would remain after millions of years, of most of our garbage, would be iron oxides and dirt.

Finally, this solution does not prevent any of the problems leading to the drastic global warning Hawking is predicting; how do you bury massive amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses at the bottom of the ocean? Oh, and what about the environmental impact of dumping stuff into the sea? No, Brin's 'dross in the abbyss' solution only works if you are burying indestructable spaceships in a science fiction novel.

Re:What about Earth?

[Anne Marie]

Planets are disposable. Soon, everyone will have his own private asteroid to live on (like Le Petit Prince), and maybe then we'll finally stop dicking each other over.

water?

[jbarnett]

What about water? Sure moving the entire human population of earth to another planet is a great idea and all (I love long road trips), but once we get there, how are we going to make coffee and beer without a huge natural supply of water.

Or oxygen, you ever try to light a smoke in a vaccumm or other place without oxygen, it is dam near impossiable. The lighter doesn't want to light, you get all light headed your lungs grasp furtilly at nothingness, just a pain in the ass. Like spandex, those things just annony me to high hell, spandex and lack of oxygen...

Re:Temperature Extremes

[c_chimelis]

From my recollection of Earths history, the climate has been through some pretty dramatic changes over the ages, and in general the age of the dinosaurs was warmer than it is now, so how come all this doom and gloom?

Remind me again...what happened to the dinosaurs? They're basically all dead due to the extreme climatic changes that they went on. Sure, some minor species managed to survive, but a large portion of the species all died off. It was once estimated that the genetic variety of the species that existed during those times was at least ten times what we know of throughout recorded history, meaning that even if 10% of the species survived back then, 90 times our current genetic variety died. I think this is cause for some doom and gloom.

There is no denying that global warming will have some pretty catastrophic affects, and may cause famine disease hunger flooding etc. but I doubt it will go as far as Mr Hawking suggests.

Last thing that I heard while chatting about global warming with a climatologist was that, if the current trend continues, conditions on this planet will have reached the intolerable within 750-1000 years. Remember, global warming isn't something that is increasing at a fixed rate. Every day, more and more "greenhouse gases" are being released into the atmosphere, meaning this effect is multiplying slowly. There are always organisms which help reduce this kind of insulating effect (mostly plant life), but in general, we're reducing their effectiveness by reducing the forest areas and also increasing the amount of man-made pollutants that are released.

Maybe space colonisation isn't the way to go and maybe we can somehow stop the current trend of pollution without thought and start to repair the damage that's already done....but I seriously doubt it. Let's face it, we're all pretty comfortable these days with cars, refrigeration, plastics, etc, so who would want to do without even a portion of the quantity of products that fill our daily lives? Not many, I can tell you that. Unfortunately, I think that mankind is too selfish at times to survive for a long period of time (we're talking on a celestial scale...I don't mean 30-10000 years). What could it hurt to try something new? Perhaps we should try to colonise a new planet. Who knows, it might bring out the best in the species...

Early Y3K talk

[affinityz]

Wow, too early to speak of the Y3K bug.

Re:Damn..

[phil reed]

Well, as global warming continues, you'll be able to tread water over it.


...phil

Re:In the year 2525...

[Operandi]

"His excellence in theoretical physics notwithstanding, I don't think he has expertise in all the disciplines that such a prediction requires."

!@$#&$%

Uhm. In fact I think it's the *exact* thing you discount that gives him such qualifications. I do not see your logic, perhaps it does not exist.

Regards

Re:It's a trap!

[aenomie]

MC Hawking

I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV

[sonofepson]

Isn't this what would be called 'an irrelevant appeal to authority'? Dr. Hawking is an expert in the field of physics not earth science, so when all is said and done his opinion on this is just that, the opinion of a layperson. So I don't think there is a reason to panic (yet).
Besides according to the Bruce Willis documentary 'Armageddon' we will all be killed by an asteroid long before then, now there is a reason to colonize Mars.

Re:Bad karma...

[ichimunki]

For a brilliant scientist like Hawking to just now be coming out with a serious proclamation that he is afraid of something called the "greenhouse effect" and for anyone to refer to the potential for this to be considered "visionary" proves that he no longer needs to be scientifically valid at all. He's obtained a sufficient cult of personality that his word is taken simply because he's an authority, not because he's right, or even timely in his conclusions. Scientists in large groups have been saying this stuff for years.

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[Col. Panic]

Exactly - in fact, I would daresay we would only be colonizing space with people who:

have the money to pay their way

have power (politicians, etc.)

are necessary to keep the colony running (engineers, etc.)

have the potential to continue the species (young, healthy - perhaps even certified-to-be-genetically-superior people representing a sufficiently diverse gene pool)

and that's about it. Hopefully there would also be room for liberal arts types since we will want a way of life worth preserving.

Science & Crack = Hawkins

[ksmeltzer]

I am sure glad that Hawkins is an idiot! Einstein, Tesla and the crew would whomp on him if they were here today. Wait, according to Hawkins theories about dimensions we could just build a machine to jump to one of his other Theorized dimensions. You know the bubbles in the bathtub speech. Trust no one especially religious leader and scientists. Ask not what Microsoft can do for you, but rather what you can do for Microsoft.

Re:Just finished a relevant book...

[freq]

i thought it was the tribbles that take over the colony ships...

Re:Does a smart man always tell the whole truth?

[gazdean]

How can such a banal post merit a 5?
Moderators, show me the insight!

Re:I'm so glad!

[11223]

Lol... there is a difference between evolution and random genetic drift.... and that is level of order. Today, we have manipulated the environment so that genetic drift exists without any correction mechanism. What happens when we drift towards stupidity? Oh, wait, that's already happening...

Re:one major flaw....

[phil reed]

there's a thousand years, which is more than enough time for the human body to evolve such that it can withstand those conditions...

Uh, no. Evolution works on timescales of millions of years, not hundreds. More likely would be a technological solution, and it would have to be a solution that alters the environment, not one that alters biology.

...according to Nostradamus, the "end of the world" should be fairly soon.

Oh, please. According to Nostradamus, the end of the world should have been 500 year ago. Before you use Nostradamus for any kind of predictions, you ought to go see what kind of track record he's got. Hint -- it's pretty miserable. Hundreds of people try to use Nostradamus to predict things every few years, and they have uniformly flopped. Based on that track record, we probably can't expect any better today.

The year 1999 seven months
From the sky will come the great King of Terror.
To resuscitate the great king of the Mongols.
Before and after Mars reigns by good luck.

Oops. Missed another one. More reading here.


...phil

Re:Does a smart man always tell the whole truth?

[Andrew_Kynde]

So you've assaulted Hawking's argument basied on his lack of credentials as an environmental scientist. I can only imagine I'm supposed to believe your claims on the basis of . . . your credentials, whatever they are.

Hawking is using projections based on what's going on right now. You are introducing this "demographic transition" to which you assign no quantifiable cause except that you "think" so. And of course your infallible vision of "bumps and corrections."

So pardon me if I still choose to believe Hawking's predictions, which are more or less in tune with similar predictions by Carl Sagan (who was a planetary scientist and an expert on the greenhouse effect and Venus).

Hawking isn't that f'sking stupid..

[BranMan]

This "article" must be a horrendous misquote. Hawking just isn't that stupid. Jeez, we could solve the Global Warming problem - with technology we have RIGHT NOW, within 5-10 years.

How? Place huge shades in orbit around Earth. The shades block the sun over small parts of the planet. Net effect? The Earth cools off. Granted that this would be construction on a huge scale, but we could cool ourselves into another Ice Age if we wanted to. We need to correct about 1 degree per decade - we can certainly handle that.

I'm getting sick of all this whining about Global Warming. Just friggin' FIX IT and move on.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell you that if something is getting too hot in the sun, then stick the damn thing in the shade.

Re:Hawking isn't that f'sking stupid..

[_shanti_]

i am sorry .. but /. doesnt allow font <size=+1000> LOL </font>

Re:He's got a point

[Alternity]

I don't think that when we finally colonize Mars we will really get away from corporations and government. I have read an interesting theory in a fiction book (ok it was fiction... so what). The colonization effort will require a HUGE amount of resources. The various governments, space agencies and all will look for private funding to achieve that goal effectivly selling parts of Mars or whatever planet we decide to colonize.

Even if this is coming straight out of fiction book I don't think it's too crazy a possibility. I sure hate to break your dream of a martian utopia but whether what I just described happens or not, I am pretty sure someone, somewhere will find a way to either profit from a planet colonization or to abuse it and put himself in a position of power.


"When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun...

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[DickBreath]

What about Brian Boitano?

One word. Yum!

Re:I'm so glad!

[BluFinger]

You know... I tend to agree about the organizing thing. I spend about half my time in meetings discussing doing things and what the possible ramifications might be rather than spending a quarter of my time trying them and seeing if it's going to work or not. Committees suck.

The moon as brie

[Zigurd]

Just crash Mir into the Moon, rather than the Earth when it is no longer usable, and the Moon will grow a rind like a great spherical camembert, which we can then harvest.

Re:I'm so glad!

[aenomie]

not as long as we continue to develope new techniques in medical science that save the life of those who would otherwise be killed off as part of the natural selection process

Re:I'm so glad!

[jszep]

That's why we need a lot more open air nuclear testing. All that radiation will really speed up the evolutionary process. (Ever see Beneath the Planet of the Apes?)

The consequences of colonizing...

[kb9vcr]

In the event that we do need to colonize space I fear the consequences. I fear the unavoidable explotation of everything possible, including our selves. For a check of what we tend to do -all- the time read more in depth of our 17th-18th centry colonization of the New World. Now enter today 400-500+ years later and we're starting a colony on Mars on the New Planet. Does human nature really change enough that we could even do something like that? That is, without repeating history for the n-th time. My money's on us not making through the next major Earth disaster but, hey, call me an optimist.(we might not make it to the next natural disaster) ;)

Why would Hawking know anything about this?

[Richard Mills]

I'm continually amazed at the authority that a Ph.D. degree confers. Did it ever occur to anyone that Stephen Hawking doesn't know what in the world he's talking about in this case? The man's a cosmologist, and a damn good one. But that certainly doesn't make him an expert on all scientific fields, and, judging from this article, his knowledge of the geosciences doesn't amount to a hill of beans. The opinions of atmospheric scientists are much more relevant--after all, they spend their lives studying this stuff.

(Just for the record, yes, IAAGP (I am a geophysicist).)

Re:Why would Hawking know anything about this?

[drinkypoo]

I'm continually amazed at the authority that a Ph.D. degree confers. Did it ever occur to anyone that Stephen Hawking doesn't know what in the world he's talking about in this case?

I make my living as a computer geek, but I also know how to make a toasted cheese sandwich.

Specialization is for insects.

Correct

[mholve]

"Mann" is correct. But also, not used in the article - which was my point entirely. ;>

My question for you is...

[PeelBoy]

What makes you think humans will have everything to do with the earth becoming more and more uninhabitable? Of course we will have SOMETHING to do with it, but not everything. Keeping earth clean from now until the next millennium (as far as human waste goes) will help buy us some time, but the end result will probably be the same, and I seriously doubt there is much we can do to about it. It's not like we can tell the sun to "please stop growing" or what not.. lol. Besides we are talking about a millennium here. By then it might be pretty easy to colonize else where, and it never hurts to have other alternatives just to be safe =)
-----------------------
Jeremy 'PeelBoy' Amberg

Re:What massive global climate change.

[Deslock]

OMG... I just assumed you're a troll. But your second post indicates you might actually believe what you've written. Well, I'll take the easy shot:

Ah yes, here we see that renowned professer Stephen Hawking is trying to use fear tactics in a quest to convince us that we need space exploration and colonization... [snip]

...they've been trying to push through globalist regulations to shackle the freedoms of nations to conduct their own affairs. [snip]

It's all just another step along their path towards a one world superstate run along Liberal policies... [snip]

OK, so now who is using fear tactics? Suggest you get your information from more reliable sources than Rush Limbaugh.

Re:genetically incompatible with your girlfriend

[eudas]

bring on the four-tittied bitches!

eudas

M$oft to Blame

[AnUnnamedSource]

I'll bet it's Bill's fault that the atmosphere is becoming the blue sky of death.

-- "On second thought, let's not go there. 'Tis a silly place."

Re:I'm so glad!

[ucblockhead]

You are mistaken if you think that people die completely at random.

It is very likely that certain traits are being bred out of the human race. For example, the trait that causes young men to drink like fish and then go drag racing.

Well...

[Xugumad]

For anyone that cares (yes, both of you), the honours environmental biology student I'm sharing a flat with reckons Hawkings is right.

DAAMMMNN

[Eric Gibson]

From the translation on babelfish:

Mankind can outlive only if it settles on another planet, let the almost completely gelaehmte scientist its listeners with the conception of its new book " The of university verses in a groove-brightly "

Yo, Neil Turok, Let's kick it!

Haw king Baby, Haw king Baby
All right stop, the cosmos and listen
Hawking is back with my brand new invention
Blackhole grabs a hold of me tightly
Then I bend the path of a photon both daily and nightly
Will it ever stop? Yo -- I don't know
Turn on the particle accelerator and I'll glow
Thru the event horizon I rock a whitehole like a vandal
Watch myself enter the blackhole as I eat a bagel


You go Hawking, you got mad rhymes. Go Hawking, it's your birthday, it's your birthday!

ShizzAM!

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[Slak]

I can't cite the source, but I recall hearing that one of the reasons that the Vikings didn't make permanent settlements in what is now Canada was the result of a "Mini-Ice Age" that occurred during the 15th Century.

I find the global warming arguments flawed. I am not convinced that 10 or 100 years is enough to extrapolate out that we are even in a period of warming. Were it the case that we are in a period of unusual warming, I find it difficult to lay the blame squarely on Mankind's (Humankind's for feminists, though they might be willing to lay the blame solely on men for this one) shoulders. Perhaps the climate would be the same regardless of industrialization.

Cheers,
Slak

Re:I'm so glad!

[ucblockhead]

That is probably true, though it isn't necessarily "the weakest" that die off. It is the "least fit" for the current environment. I'd argue that there is a change in breeding and death patterns brought about by technology, and that as such, evolution still happens.

I'd also point out that one very important part of evolutionary theory is sexual selection, which is controlled not by how people die, but how people choose mates. That is obviously still going strong.

Our only chance is space exploration?

[mst]

Hmmm, let's see. Current space assets of mankind:

- A mold-ridden space station
- A handful of local transport space shuttles
- Space cowboys

We're doomed.

Re:Does a smart man always tell the whole truth?

[Stoutlimb]

"Hawking is using projections based on what's going on right now. You are introducing this "demographic transition" to which you assign no quantifiable cause except that you "think" so. And of course your infallible vision of "bumps and corrections." No, I did not introduce it out of thin air. It was introduced to me in my second year of high school as a fact. I think most social scientists will agree that "higher standard of living = lower population growth rate". If you still insist, I can quote credible sources. "And of course your infallible vision of bumps and corrections." You call me infalliable. I don't. I'm trying to be very careful about not making outlandish claims, I'm trying to outline possible scenarios, and highlight which of these we want to work towards. I'm proposing that humanity is dumb enough that any road towards any possible steady state will be bumpy. I quote the last 50 years of history as proof that we can occasionally cull our herd. I quote the black plague or flying rocks that our herd can be culled naturally. "So pardon me if I still choose to believe Hawking's predictions" I do too. Hawking also knows better than you or I that no prediction like this is 100% accurate. I'm almost certain (call it a hunch) that he considered the steady state theory as a possible desirable outcome, also not guaranteed. So what's a scientist to do? Tells us to get our asses off the planet in case the worst happens. Use one possible prediction of the truth to impart urgency into it. Less intelligent people will (hopefully) listen and do the right thing, and never realize that this is but one of many possible futures. Some Slashdot readers are smarter than the masses, so we can discuss all options. Bork! Bork! Bork!

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[jafac]

. . . I guess I'd better lie about my vasectomy on the application, then.

I dont doubt it...

[xtermz]

In fact, Part of me see's society colapsing in 30-50 years. Look at how far we have degraded just in the last 30 or so. Our freedoms are systematically being destroyed, countries that hate us are stockpiling nuclear arsenals, and such and such. We dont need a big catastrophe like a comet or the earths environment failing. we're going to do it all ourselves.

"sex on tv is bad, you might fall off..."

Re:I dont doubt it...

[xtermz]

Yes sir and history repeats itself. Remember, the people of germany thought hitler was a great guy. Same thing is going on now. According to most polls (if you believe them...btw, who is running the polls anyway?) our leaders in government cant do any wrong. Hitler led his people to disaster and our leaders are doing the same. And btw, when the PRC has their hands in every government around the world, and socialism is popular opinion and God is but a fleeting word from our vocabulary.....WWII will look like a walk in the part. Open up your eyes sir. I take it that you are either from that generation or at least somewhat my senior. The stakes are alot higher than just Europe now. And I can hear the laughs now, I can hear them snickering behind their monitors ('hehehe...little conspiracy freak, go back in your bunker'). But arent we getting closer to a one world government already? With the UN saying they will no longer respect soverignty , and the call for 'global governance'. And yes sir, I am complaining aby my freedoms being destroyed. We are in the now. We havent learned from our mistakes and like I said, history repeats itself. This time, its not just the jewish people being trampled on, its any god fearing, or just any moral person out there who is at risk

"sex on tv is bad, you might fall off..."

Re:I dont doubt it...

[warren.v]

hmm. I tend to agree with that to a certain extent. Society will colapse, but I do think that the species will continue to survive. I guess we would go back to a sci-fi type of post ww 3/dark ages kind of scenario where only the strongest and fittest will live. Hopefully survivors will learn to appreciate nature a bit more...

Re:I dont doubt it...

[JimPooley]

That's bollocks.
Go back sixty years - when war raged over Europe and the Nazis, who had invaded everywhere but Britain were attempting to systematically eradicate the Jews.
And you're complaining about your freedoms being destroyed?
Suddenly the good ol' days don't sound so good, do they....

Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems

Latest Big Brother news

[brer_rabbit]

After their hit "Survivor", CBS's follow up show "Big Brother", in an effort to gather ratings, will be moving the show to Mars where they'll create the first Mars colony. No word yet on whether you get a space suit when you get kicked out of the house...

Re:What massive global climate change.

[JimPooley]

Hey look! It's a pig-ignorant right wing arsehole!
There has *NOT* always been a hole in the ozone over the poles. And it *IS* getting bigger.
The climate *IS* changing, and you *ARE* a tosser.


Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems

reformatted repost (sorry)

[Stoutlimb]

"Hawking is using projections based on what's going on right now. You are introducing this "demographic transition" to which you assign no quantifiable cause except that you "think" so. And of course your infallible vision of "bumps and corrections."

No, I did not introduce it out of thin air. It was introduced to me in my second year of high school as a fact. I think most social scientists will agree that "higher standard of living = lower population growth rate". If you still insist, I can quote credible sources.

"And of course your infallible vision of bumps and corrections."

You call me infalliable. I don't. I'm trying to be very careful about not making outlandish claims, I'm trying to outline possible scenarios, and highlight which of these we want to work towards.

I'm proposing that humanity is dumb enough that any road towards any possible steady state will be bumpy. I quote the last 50 years of history as proof that we can occasionally cull our herd. I quote the black plague or flying rocks that our herd can be culled naturally.

"So pardon me if I still choose to believe Hawking's predictions"

I do too. Hawking also knows better than you or I that no prediction like this is 100% accurate. I'm almost certain (call it a hunch) that he considered the steady state theory as a possible desirable outcome, also not guaranteed.

So what's a scientist to do? Tells us to get our asses off the planet in case the worst happens. Use one possible prediction of the truth to impart urgency into it. Less intelligent people will (hopefully) listen and do the right thing, and never realize that this is but one of many possible futures.

Some Slashdot readers are smarter than the masses, so we can discuss all options.

Bork! Bork! Bork!

Re:In the year 2525...

[jafac]

Sagan DID actually say something about the danger of earth's runaway climate between bong-hits.

Oh yeah, it was NUCLEAR WINTER - that was Sagan's baby. Drop enough bombs, kick up enough dust into the atmosphere, block out the sun for a period of a year, long enough to kill all life on the planet.
It's a shame he didn't live to see The Matrix.

It's a trap!

[OlympicSponsor]

His dire predictions of acid rain and recommendation to colonize space is just a ploy to get all out of reach of Earth's gravity where his disability will no longer affect him--and he can crush us like bugs with his mighty exoskeleton!
--

Steven Hawking: Lyrical Terrorist

[austad]

MC Hawking rules!!!!

Let him drop a little science on your ass.

Re:In the year 2525...

[ackthpt]

...does anyone else hear that song in their heads?

Yes, but I was thinking of 3535, to meet his minimum millenium requirement. An interesting point is that we are actually consuming more petroleum than before the 1974 oil crisis. So much for fuel efficient cars, with all these SUV's on the road. Maybe the recent jump will help get us back on track.

As far as pollution, this is actually being addressed far better than up to the 70's, where toxic compounds were belched into the air and poured into streams. An old highschool bud has designed a landfill for a city of about 1,500 people to capture natural gas. The landfill has been in operation for about 5 years now and provides more gas than the town can use and it won't peak production for 50 years.

Now, this isn't open encouragement to have larger families to take up the slack, but like people acquiring gas hog vehicles, they have a short memory of the last crisis and what caused it.


--
Chief Frog Inspector

Men?

[mholve]

"...like the atmosphere of the planet Venus, so that men can no longer live on earth."

Men? What the fuck is that? What about women?

How about just "people" or "humans" or "humanity?"

Re:Men?

[jbarnett]

That big blue room? Really?

So what was this women like? Are they really in 2D or is that just the primtive display device that I am using?

Re:Men?

[mholve]

sorry, but the word in german for "people" also means "men".

Oh yeah? Which one would that be again?

Re:Men?

[billybob2001]

Volkswagen?

Re:Men?

[talesout]

That is going to suck, the closed female will be planets away, it is going to take forever to go on any dates.

Which means for geeks that they will now have a justifiable reason for not dating?

Note: In the past year I had a woman brave the trenches to beat me over the head with a club and drag me kicking and screaming out of my computer room and into the light of day. It really isn't that bad once you get over the light-blindness. ;-).

Re:Men?

[mholve]

Right... In OLDE English, and a few decades ago.

Re:Men?

[SpryGuy]

Well, it's just as bad to say 'human' in that case.

You won't be satisfied until it's "huperson", I'm sure...

Oops, that word has 'son' in it... ugh. Make that 'Huperoffspring'

There! NOW are you satisfied? Are you finished raping the English language to cure whatever petty PC paranoia you've got going?

Mankind will not survive this trechery :-)

- Spryguy

Re:Men?

[talesout]

You will be suprised to find that women actually are 3D objects, just like those videos depict them!


I know it shocked the hell out of me.

Re:Men?

[Spudley]

Well according to that book, Women are from Venus anyway, so they should be able to survive here when it gets like that....

:-)

Re:Don't be Silly

[Dirtside]

No no, he's going to set off a nuclear bomb in the San Andreas fault so that the western half of California will fall into the ocean, thus making his thousands of square miles of worthless desert land into valuable beachfront property.

No, wait, that's MY plan...

Sweet Revenge?

[jabber01]

Hawking on Earth's Lifespan?

I dunno, I mean, after what Earth had to say about Hawking's Lifespan, and the quality thereof - it sounds like he's just being bitter.

The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196

I'm so glad!

[handorf]

I just hope we get it over with soon and let some hyper-intelligent squids evolve.

We've been hogging the top of the resource chain for too long.

Like we'll get organized enough and stop arguing long enough to colonize another planet.

Re:I'm so glad!

[Chandon Seldon]

We have significantly slowed the process of evolution through medical technology. Since we now go to insane lengths to allow *everyone* to live and reproduce, the gene pool won't change.

Re:I'm so glad!

[plague3106]

Yes but another big part of evolution states that the weakest members must die off. We don't let that happen. Not that i'm saying thats a bad thing, but i'm willing to bet all the lifeforms we attempt to remove with drugs, sprays and other poisions are evolving faster then we are.

Re:I'm so glad!

[DickBreath]

What about adpatations then? Instead of "evolution".

Would the earth change so radically (on it's own, if we quit ruining it) in 1000 years that we wouldn't adapt?

Re:I'm so glad!

[calloc]

But you forget that evolution is two sided. The weak die (or did) AND the strong conquer. Today strengh is measured in intelligence and the ability to use it for your advancement. Once a person or small group get enough power, they will use it to destroy everyone else (who could possibly hurt them). It IS the logical thing to do.

Re:I'm so glad!

[tshak]

Speaking of evolution, why is it that our bodys won't evolve to accomodate it's environment?

Re:I'm so glad!

[spondylus]

People take way too long to turn over generations. They also resist change mightily, altering their environment to suit their tastes. Hot out? Use air-conditioning. Don't like living near work? Spend 2hrs/day of your life stuck in traffic. Want farms and golf courses and swimming pools in the desert? Suck aquifers faster than they can be replenished, concoct hokey ideas about transporting millions of gallons uphill for a thousand miles. Energy becoming expensive? Choices in life becoming increasingly exclusive of one another? Moan, whine, bury head in sand, borrow heavily on the future.

Now things which turn over quickly--insects, mites, bacteria, etc--they'll have no trouble adapting.

As for your last point, who knows? No doubt we'll go the way of the trilobite and the dinosaur by and by, but 1000 years is on the short side, barring sudden catastrophe. Personally, I am not nearly so alarmist as the distinguished Dr. Hawking. Long before we've screwed things up so mightily that we exterminate ourselves as a species, I think we we will take a giant step back in civilization and technology. Not as far back as Walter Miller describes in Canticle for Leibowitz, but back to something more locally sustainable. I don't think that this is even inevitable, just all too likely given human nature.

There are plenty of Cassandras around, but her doom is never to be believed.

Re:I'm so glad!

[handorf]

Evolution? But we have to save the childern! THINK OF THE CHILDREN! You can't teach them evolution! It'll rot their minds.

Mostly, I think the squid children. Maybe the'll work out that sustainable resource utilization is important BEFORE they poison themselves and let a few rich, but equally dead, corporate executives hog all the earth's wealth.

Re:I'm so glad!

[linzeal]

What does an evolved cube dweller look like ?

Re:I'm so glad!

[ahodgson]

Once the ozone layer's gone, the UV should do the trick. Might be hard finding something to eat while we're waiting out the changes, though.

Re:I'm so glad!

[handorf]

It is a fact and a theory:

See The Evolution FAQ

Re:I'm so glad!

[SpryGuy]

Read Darwin's Radio and find out ;-)

- Spryguy

Re:I'm so glad!

[SpryGuy]

Evolution is a fact.

The details of exactly how it works are the subjects of several competing theories.

See the difference?

- Spryguy

Re:I'm so glad!

[plague3106]

b/c we have stopped evolving.

The End Is Almost Near

[skyrytow]

I completely agree with him, if business does not take control of the pollutants that they are spewing into the environment, there will be no clean air to breath or clean water to drink in a few hundred years.

Re:He has been judged early

[JimPooley]

Jesus H. Christ on a motherfucking bicycle!
I wish the rapture *would* come - we'd get rid of all you arseholes and maybe the world would be a better place without your stupidty and bigotry.


Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[Anne Marie]

Is this man, or is this the natural cycle of events? Is this Mother Nature wreaking her revenge on those who would try to control her?

Actually, it's just too many Pentium IIIs.

Ho's and Children First

[dbthomas]

How does he have the time to postulate on the end of the world while he is so busy creating rhymes wit a quickness and kickin it with all the Bitches and Ho's? MC Hawking gots mad skillz.

What? No MSG?

[ackthpt]

I'm not going to the moon without guarantees of my minimum daily requirement of starch, grease, caffeine, sugar, artificial flavors, artificial colors and preservatives. They'll need to build a chemical plant up there first.


--
Chief Frog Inspector

Propaganda and lies!

[MaxVlast]

He's been gotten by the crazy space-exploration people! Another scientist bites the dust.

Seriously, though I have a lot of friends who believe that our only hope is colonization. That leaves me quite uneasy. The scale of the necessary effort would be fantastic, and the implications for humanity are quite staggering--particularly if people go far enough away. It could result in a forking of the species. And people think forking the kernel is a bad thing. Wait until you're genetically incompatible with your girlfriend!

--
Max V.

Re:Propaganda and lies!

[christrs]

Well, here comes one more incompatibility between "friends".

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[lient]

What does Hawking know about the environment anyway. I thought he was a Gansta Rapper!

Re:He's got a point

[eudas]

poster:
Do you actually think the major corporations will stay on Earth? Just like what was said in 'Fight Club': It will be the corporations that colonize space. So don't worry, there will be a brand new Hilton Hotel waiting for you when you arrive on Mars.

me:
hello, 'total recall'...

poster:
Yeah right. Knowing our luck, all the smart ones will die off leaving the gene pool about the same as a packed Walmart on Friday night (what a sight that is).

me:
oh god... you're depressing, you know that?

eudas

Stupid solution

[Sri Lumpa]

Ok, I haven't read the links so I may be wrong, but if Earth becomes unfriendly wouldn't it be easier to teraform it rather than to go on another planet that we would have to terraform anyway (even if we find another planet that can sustain human life without terraforming it would probably be far far away and maybe even in another galaxy).

Bah

[Dice]

as mentioned previously, the whole "let's go colonize other planets" idea doesn't work out because people in general don't want to fund such a thing. well, why not? because they're too stupid to realise the inherit COOLNESS of going to other planets. Okay, how do we make them pay for us to go out and play Star Trek? The answer is obvious, we TRASH THE FSCKING PLANET! Yeah, let's see how you like living here now that 90% of the earth is being bombarded by cosmic radiation! Don't you wish you could live under a nice CLEAN DOME on MARS?! HUH?! SUCK TOXINS!

To that end, I propose that all people who are interested in future colinization of other planets go out and buy a whole smeg load of styrofoam and BURN IT! Then go out and get a bunch of aresol cans and RELEASE THEM INTO THE ATMOSPHERE! BURN CRUDE OIL! NAPALM THE RAIN FORESTS! POUR OIL INTO THE OCEANS!

Re:Ultra-smart getting concerned for human race

[bjrubble]

me.foot.insert(mouth)

Not to be pedantic, but if me isn't implicit in foot, how is it implicit in mouth? Or is this some generic mouth you're putting your foot into?

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[Muttonhead]

In ancient times when people could not read, priests weilded tremendous power over the masses largely because of their ignorance. Today people can read, but we have a new problem: Science has become the dominant mythology (in the Joseph Campbell sense of absolute belief), and therefore, people, corporations, etc., with agendas can manipulate scientific studies to support their particular desires.

People hear the nightly news where a Peter Jennings says, "A new study has shown that blah blah blah...", and they believe it when it might be corporate propaganda.

The back and forth thing like "salt is good for you, salt is bad for you" is an example of companies with huge amounts of money at stake manipulating "information" to eke out more profit and prevent a mass exodus away from their product.

This sort of thing was revealed with the cigarette industry. They could walk up to the line of truth and say, "Scientific studies show that there is no conclusive evidence that smoking is harmful." That's true. Note the word "conslusive." NOTHING is conclusive in science. Just when you think you understand physics with Newtonian laws, Einstein comes in and adds a new twist. But while Newtonian physics isn't "conclusive," we sure have built a lot of skyscrapers with it.

It's only because most people have adopted science as infallable that it is possible to do this. While science attempts to present the truth, and most scientists are honorable, science is, at best, an approximation of the truth. But I think it's being increasingly manipulated because people have figured out that this is the way to influence our modern belief system. Science simply isn't questioned enough.

Just as the ancient priests became corrupt and were increasingly questioned by scietists (the earth is round, etc.), now science needs to be questioned: Who did that study? Who funded it? Who benefits from this information, etc.

If I was in marketing, I would think that manipulating perception through "scientific studies" would be an absolute gold mine. But I'm not that depraved that I'd be in marketing.

Question everything.

Re:In the year 2525...

[jafac]

The last oil-crisis was NOT caused by gas-guzzling cars. It was caused by greedy oil companies, and OPEC constraining supplies to boost profits. Just as they are trying to do now.

However, they didn't learn their lesson last time, evidently, that when you do that, you fuck-over the economy so bad that you throw the world into a deep recession.

Re:Does a smart man always tell the whole truth?

[iclysdal]

While not ruling out several holocausts, in the long term I see humanity stabilizing with the environment in a new ecological balance. This won't happen any time soon, I think we have to wait until industrialization runs its course and we run out of our fossil fuels. Then, we wait for biotechnology to run its course and settle down into something stable. We then will be in symbiosis with our manmade ecology. Once we settle down into a several hundred year groove and all are new technologies become old, we will be in a steady state. But mind you, I see bumps and population "corrections" along the way.

Why in the name of all the Gods should we wait until after we've exhausted all of the fossil fuels we can get our hands on to do something about this? There is absolutely no excuse for not using renewable energies in significant quantities - wind power is a good example of a technology that doesn't ever run out, is completely free to harness, doesn't pollute (other than noise pollution), and is generally a good idea. Biomass projects are also fascinating. In Toronto, there are projects working on trying to harness energy from the decomposition of city landfills - now that's cool.

But of course, no one right now is putting in the initial seed money to use green power, even with "energy crises" looming, and people barricading refineries in Europe. Because we'll just wait until we've burned the last coal, put more carbon dioxide into our air, made winter feel like summer and made summer unbearable, because that's what is needed for our industrial society to run its course.

And then people wonder when people predict that our society as a whole is fucked.

ian.

Re:Gross is all you need sometimes.

[Stoutlimb]

I think both of us could find exceptions to each others theories, thats the nature of them, they're full of exceptions. Naturally all data will not fit.

In generalities, both sides of an argument can be correct. If the demographic transition is not real, then we're screwed as a race. If the demographic transition is real, then we have a better chance.

I think this is a case where us scientists would love if the data would fit our models. If the demographic transition is too loose of a generalization to be of much help, I think it's up to humanity to give it a bit of a push. The chineese realize this, and good for them.

I admit you have perfectly valid examples of why I'm wrong, just as I have valid examples you're wrong. I don't know about you, but I don't have enough data to prove my point conclusively. But I know which of the two I'd like to be true.

Not good science, admittedly. But it's the hints of the existence of these kind of checks and balances that *might* me the salvation of humanity. If I were a dean, I'd appropriate money into more reasearch on this.

(Thats my last word.)
Bork! Bork! Bork!

I'm surprised....

[plastickiwi]

I'm surprised to hear space colonization cheerleading from Hawking, who's not otherwise given to impractical ramblings.

Whatever problems we're having with climate here on Earth, they pale before the challenge of terraforming even the relatively habitable planet Mars. All the other planets in our solar system are gaseous horrors or barren rocks.

Surely any technology that could make Mars livable for humans could be adapted to reverse environmental castastrophe here on Earth.

Re:I'm surprised....

[Bearpaw]

Not if you don't care about the population. Recall the Centauri bombardment of the Narn Homeworld in B5?? Similar effect, but add an Ice Age as well. . . .

I don't remember the Centauri referring to that as "terraforming" -- or even "centauriforming" -- though it would be in character for them to dissemble like that.

Londo: "War? War is such an ugly word. We just thought Narn could use a little ... 'cooling off'."

Re:I'm surprised....

[Bearpaw]

Surely any technology that could make Mars livable for humans could be adapted to reverse environmental castastrophe here on Earth.

Mostly true, but wouldn't it make sense to do at least some testing elsewhere first? We've got a pretty shitty track record as far as unintented consequences are concerned ...

(Plus, some terraforming techniques are kinda tricky to adapt to an occupied planet -- slamming it with comets, fer instance.)

Re:I'm surprised....

[Salgak1]

Bearpaw wrote... (Plus, some terraforming techniques are kinda tricky to adapt to an occupied planet -- slamming it with comets, fer instance.)

Not if you don't care about the population. Recall the Centauri bombardment of the Narn Homeworld in B5 ?? Similar effect, but add an Ice Age as well. . . .

Re:He's got a point

[Tony Hammitt]

Yes but Humans can stand far lower atmospheric pressure than flies can, plus cold temperatures. All we have to do is either depressurize or freeze a compartment and all of the insects will die. Neither of those would be hard to do in space.

And no, Mr. dsfox, I'm not modest.

Everything is disposable

[crow]

Just like everything else. You use it up, then you throw it out.

Time to toss out the earth.

Maybe some hacker will dig it out of the trash and fix it, but mainstream society will move on.

Guh?

[Otto]

On the point about global cooling, this is ALSO a possible outcome simply because changing a stable system cause unpredictable outcomes; similar to the butterfly effect often widely discussed.

On it's face, this is the stupidest statement I've ever seen. Stable means that you can't easily change it, it resists change. Stable.

Perhaps you meant to say that introducing change into a chaotic system causes unpredictable outcomes.

---

Newton was wrong.

[Stoutlimb]

Newtonian physics is very wrong, because it only accurately describes motion in the lower range of relative velocities.

Einsteins theory is much better.

But Newton definately had better theories than any clods around him, but he was never able to disprove his own (wrong) theory.

Hawking proved himself wrong.

Who is smarter?

Bork! Bork! Bork!

Who cares if its hot and acid!

[Kerg]

By 2525 we've all uploaded our brains into a huge Matrix and the sysadmins are living deep underground near the earth's core where it's still inhabitable.

Oh, no

[11223]

Combine this with the fact that our civilisation is going to fall to pieces in the next 100 or so years and leave us in another dark age... we'll all be dead, because we have no method of leaving earth!

Hari Seldon, where are you now?

Re:Oh, no

[Talonius]

I always thought that Asimov's version of mass psychology was interesting, and entirely plausible.

I have friends who laugh at me for that, but geez, just look at marketing.

-- Talonius

Re:Oh, no

[fluffhead]

Heh. I'm about 1/3 of the way through Foundation's Triumph by David Brin and it's pretty decent. Unfortunately, now I'm going to have to go backwards and read the first two of the "Second Foundation Trilogy" tribute stories (by Gregory Benford and Greg Bear), since I found the third one first (at the grocery store no less). Of course the original Asimov trilogy still kicks ass against all comers.

Somebody needs to invent R. Daneel Olivaw NOW!

Here's a new .sig idea:
Don't worry, it's all part of the Seldon Plan ;-)

#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak

HELL YEAH

[suitcase]

This is the funniest thing I have EVER heard on the internet! I laughed so fucking hard when "Crazy as Fuck" started up, I had my entire family here listening to it.

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[Gothland]

I don't want to burst your bubble, because I too am definitely a skeptic of these "We're going to kill ourselves in short order" scenarios. I personally believe that nature will kill off enough of us to bring our environmental impact down to the level that it can recover from.

I think of it this way. I get a fever when I'm sick, because my body is trying to fight off a virus. We are the virus, global warming is the fever. We're giving ourselves WAY too much credit if we think we're a fatal virus. We're more on the level of a cold. Damn annoying for a couple of millenia, and you can never totally get rid of it, but the symptoms go away with time.

As for whether or not global warming is our doing... I'm pretty convinced. I saw a television special on global warming made by the CBC (scientifically reliable, in my opinion) telling about a scientist that had done studies of glaciers to determine the amount of CO2 (I think) in the atmosphere. This allowed him to trace back through multiple ice ages. He also had data collected atop some remote mountain (no where near civilization) that recorded CO2 levels over the last 50 years or so. The chart went up and down based on the amount of vegetation on the planet, a result of ice ages coming and going. But when it got to the industrial revolution...

For all intents and purposes the line went verticle. The difference caused by the industrial revolution is equivalent to the difference caused by an ice age, except it happened virtually instantaneously, and it happened at a time in the earth's history where CO2 levels were at a relative high.

Yeah, we gave the earth a cold. Now if only we could find some chicken soup.

A more practical suggestion

[Wellspring]

Quite the contrary. We will need to move into mine shafts deep in the earth. Food can be stockpiled, pigs can be bred und schlaughtered.

In order to allow the human race to quickly regain its old numbers, we will need to bring a hundred women for every man.

The men can be chosen from the finest examples of humanity: scientists, programmers, engineers, great leaders, etc. The women, however, should be chosen based on their fertility, and their ability to entice men to undertake the onerous task of breeding so many of them so often.

Figure skaters, actresses, musicians, cheerleaders, all possess qualities which will lend themselves to additional fertility. I expect that while it will take great effort and creativity to keep their men suffiently aroused to perform their duties to humanity, that the greatest of our men will rise to the challenge.

I guess it is time to stop worrying and love pollution....

(Apologies to Stanley Kubrick)

Re:A more practical suggestion

[Vuarnet]

I expect that while it will take great effort and creativity to keep their men suffiently aroused to perform their duties to humanity, that the greatest of our men will rise to the challenge.
I'd rather have them rise to the surface, leaving more chicks for the rest of us not-quite-greatest geeks.

Energy consumption/individual is the issue

[maynard]

What does it matter if we lower population rates at the expense of increased energy consumption, and therefor increased pollution per person? The point is that it's unsustainable and generating noticable global changes right now.

As for "culling our herd", I note that none of the mass killings in Cambodia, Russia, Germany, El Salvador, or where ever has actually reduced local population levels. People respond to such selection pressure by simply having more children.

Re:Energy consumption/individual is the issue

[Stoutlimb]

"What does it matter if we lower population rates at the expense of increased energy consumption, and therefor increased pollution per person? The point is that it's unsustainable and generating noticable global changes right now"

Hmm, I wonder what will happen first. Will we destroy our environment because of our high energy consumption? Or will we run out of energy before we destroy our environment too much?

Oil has already peaked and will slowly be declining. We will eventually run down our fossil fuels and be forced into a lower energy consumption state.

I wish I could live long enough, I'm curious to see which happens!

Bork! Bork! Bork!

Funny Babelfish Translations

[nharmon]

In a lecture in Edinburgh explained Hawking, either a " accident or the ground electrode warming " would extinguish the life on earth.

Ahh! End of Life on Earth according to Hawking involves a short in an electrical circuit heating up and...

the atmosphere becomes ever hotter, and that it becomes, meant like Venus bubbling sulfuric acid

turns the earth into bubbling sulfuric acid!

The biggest issue

[Cally]

Anthropogenic climate change is the biggest and most frightening thing happening at present: in fact, it renders everything else the entire species has done insignificant. You worry about Napster, Microsoft, deCSS? fsck it. In the last century we drove more species extinct than at any time since 65 million years ago. And that doesn't even matter , because climate change is going to wipe out our 'civilisation' in the blink of an eye. Don't take my word for it - check the IPCC or some recent reports or even the neutered industry sops at the EPA. And what are we in the West - the people directly responsible for this catastrophe - doing? complaining about petrol prices...

Sometimes humanity makes me sick. We Europeans aren't much better than you Americans (we use half as much energy per head, which of course is still 10-100 times more than the 3rd World.) And the third world of course can't be held back: China and India and the Pacific Rim are /developing/ countries.

Sorry for the pessimistic rant. But seeing the jokey responses to this story fills me with despair.

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[xtal]

to clean up the planet we are on now, has anyone ever thought that it might not be possible?

This just plain isn't going to happen in a "Free" society (economic freedom, anyhow). Not unless you and everyone you know are willing to give up gas-guzzlin pollutin SUVs (the days of a fuel cell SUV are a long, long, long way off), willing to give up consuming massive amounts of food, willing to give up massive water and power consumption, and in short, give up much of the luxuries that western society is based on! And let's not forget that India and China are working as fast as they can to go through THEIR industrial revolutions and get to where we are as soon as possible. Short of imposing draconian restrictions on freedom (ain't gunna happen), space research is the only alternative to the human race being extincted. NO, we're not going to launch 6 billion people into orbit, but you don't need that for a self sustaining colony, either.

Now, "our planet is dying." Yes, our planet is getting hotter. (Hell, it was 92 degrees here yesterday, and we're in October. Huh?) Is this man, or is this the natural cycle of events? Is this Mother Nature wreaking her revenge on those who would try to control her?

No, you CANNOT conclusively say our planet is doing anything that it hasn't in the past. Earth has ALWAYS been changing; It has violent tectonic cycles that we don't experience over our civilization's timeframes, would you blame a catastrophic quake in california on "Earth getting even", no, of course not, that's stupid. Earth was a LOT hotter a dozens of millenia ago; It will be hotter or maybe even colder in the future. WE HAVE NO ATMOSPHERIC MODEL, so we can't tell. By the time it matters, we'll be dead, and our kids will be, and likely, THEIR kids will be. If we're not doing something more productive by then, well, I'll be dust anyhow. Until then I'll work to improve technology in any way I can, and maybe it'll make a difference.

You can come up with ideas and examples all day long, but the basic fact is that man doesn't live long enough to have a clear view of what's happening to the Earth, and why. The ozone hole is even in doubt according to some scientists. Who is who, and who decides the planet is dying?

Ahh, the voice of reason. This is _so_ true. Man will have exterminated HIMSELF long before our environment does it to us; We can last a long time, even if we can't go outside. Dig a hole and use nuclear power. Mankind is a great innovator and extremely adaptive when need be. Of course, this isn't practical for 6 billion people, but your fellow man in Africa doesn't drive a suburban, either.

If the planet's death doesn't get us, the mere fact of overpopulation will.

Fud, fud, fud. Once a society becomes industrialized, the cost of children increases and the necessity of having them to insure someone will care for you goes away, since you can save money. Then, birth rates _collapse_, which is what's happening in North America and Western Europe. Their is no reason to assume that higher living standards in China and India won't do the same - although, there will be a LOT of pollution from those efforts. Do you know how many hundreds of millions of tons of coal China burns every year? Your car doesn't make a lick of difference in comparison. They have no choice.

We will never colonize another planet, however, because the populace at large doesn't care about space. It's viewed as a "neato" thing until the bill comes in. Nobody wants to pay taxes to fund NASA, and private corporations have too many regulations on them. (Probably for good measure; I don't know.)

This is sad, but true. The only thing that will make us colonize space is a major disaster costing millions of lives on Earth. Something along the lines of a asteroid strike (best), limited nuclear war or biological warfare agents run amok (worst, by far), etc. I wrote a really good rant about this on /. some time ago. You're right, we're all jaded about space, because none of us will ever get there. Which is a shame, becuase if more people got to see how small earth is from 100,000 feet, and how BIG the black background is, maybe we wouldn't be killing each other over things like Religion and stupid political egos and work together.

But, I'm bitter. YMMV.

Damn..

[sporty]

What am i supposed to do with all that land in florida i bought?

---

Re:Damn..

[jafac]

shit, people won't laugh at Waterworld anymore. . .

Re:Damn..

[ahodgson]

nah, Waterworld will still suck ;)

Some people are already there.

[PsychoSpunk]

Given the current state of affairs, I'm inclined to believe that nearly the entire population of the US is living in outer space. We all know these people. They're the ones who simply eke out an existence for themselves, instead of doing meaningful things in their short lifespans.

He's got a point

[Tony Hammitt]

I'd like to move to Mars. Getting away from the government and megacorps would be good with me.

I think that most people wouldn't move no matter what. As Heinlein pointed out, most people in Pompeii knew that Vesuvius was rumbling and didn't leave town. Most would just die here.

Those of us who left would probably be the intelligent ones, so it may not be bad for OUR species. Can't say that it would help all of the other species much. I won't miss the flies.

But I don't think that Earth will become uninhabitable. Once the atmosphere starts killing people, there'll be less people to pollute it, so we'll have some negative feedback in the system.

But just in case, let's make sure that IPv6 has lots of addresses set aside for other planets =-]

Re:He's got a point

[Tony Hammitt]

I think that corporations and governments will be fairly easy to get away from considering that, like in Montana, it will be easy to move elsewhere. You'll probably need to have a self-sustaining pressurized home, who says that you will want to have it near everyone else's? When you have airlocks, you can keep pretty much anyone out just by latching open the inner door. By then we'll all be using secure communication channels, so there goes another privacy concern.

In short, I'm not too worried that the future colonists of Mars are going to worry about what some large, faceless, off-planet corporation thinks of what they do with their time.

How much does the fact that U-Haul sucks affect your life after you move? Do you think that the people that colonized North America worried much about the government or some companies back in Europe? I don't think that everyone will be working for some mega-corp and I do think that you'll have to post a bond for your return voyage before anyone will take you to another planet. Real colonization will probably wait for regularly scheduled voyages, if only to keep the barrier to entry low.

Re:He's got a point

[LS]

Firstly, if you think you'll escape the government and corps by moving to mars, you are probably very wrong. They are the only two entities funding space research right now.

As for escaping flies... I wouldn't count on that also. Humans have a long history of bringing vermin stowaways and other creatures along with them on their explorations.

LS

Re:He's got a point

[mrsalty]

you think moing off-planet will get you AWAY from government and mega-corps? Just who do you think is going to fund these little trips? Until space travel is as ubiquitous as car travel (ala the Jetsons) the Heileinian Wild West in space will never become a reality. It may be more freewheeling but try and imaging the american west if NO ONE had the ability to leave on a whim. Hard work, long hours, dangerous conditions, frustrated workers, and the inability to pickup and leave or go home without the aproval of your employer. I also would love to go, but the picture is not so rosy for the first wave of workers.

Re:He's got a point

[dimator]

me:
hello, 'total recall'..

Wasn't total recall the movie with the hooker that had 3 jugs? ...

I VOTE FOR COLONIZATION OF MARS!!


--

Re:He's got a point

[dante773]

I'd like to move to Mars. Getting away from the government and megacorps would be good with me.

Do you actually think the major corporations will stay on Earth? Just like what was said in 'Fight Club': It will be the corporations that colonize space. So don't worry, there will be a brand new Hilton Hotel waiting for you when you arrive on Mars.

Those of us who left would probably be the intelligent ones.

Yeah right. Knowing our luck, all the smart ones will die off leaving the gene pool about the same as a packed Walmart on Friday night (what a sight that is).

Re:He's got a point

[alexpage]

But just in case, let's make sure that IPv6 has lots of addresses set aside for other planets =-]

I don't think that's such a great idea - assuming that we colonize Mars before Earth is destroyed, even with a high-bandwidth satellite link (with relays for when Earth and Mars are on either side of the Sun), you're still going to get a crappy game of Quake.

Still, it's not as bad as the 4-year lag getting documents from your Intranet server on Alpha Centauri over the space-bound Virtual Private LAN...

Alex

Re:Translations?

[zorgon]

I KNEW IT! Stephen Hawking is George Clinton!!!!! (ever see them together? aha!) One Universe, under a Groove!

While it'd be much easier..

[Talonius]

to clean up the planet we are on now, has anyone ever thought that it might not be possible?

I'm not an environmentalist. Sometimes I wonder if man knows as much about science as he likes to believe. As a specific example, look at the various statements made abouts food. Salt is bad for you. Salt is good for you. Salt is bad for you. Salt is bad for you only if you already have high blood pressure. Repeat for eggs and cholesterol.

Part of the problem is that everyone is an expert in this day and age; there is no one authorized source of information. (Nor would I endorse such a thing.) The side effect is that a lot of plain misinformation abounds.

Now, "our planet is dying." Yes, our planet is getting hotter. (Hell, it was 92 degrees here yesterday, and we're in October. Huh?) Is this man, or is this the natural cycle of events? Is this Mother Nature wreaking her revenge on those who would try to control her?

You can come up with ideas and examples all day long, but the basic fact is that man doesn't live long enough to have a clear view of what's happening to the Earth, and why. The ozone hole is even in doubt according to some scientists. Who is who, and who decides the planet is dying?

As for man living out the millenia, he's dead because of himself. If the planet's death doesn't get us, the mere fact of overpopulation will. We will never colonize another planet, however, because the populace at large doesn't care about space. It's viewed as a "neato" thing until the bill comes in. Nobody wants to pay taxes to fund NASA, and private corporations have too many regulations on them. (Probably for good measure; I don't know.)

-- Talonius

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[vague]

Or maybe your information is BUNK. 'Several respected Meteorologists' have also expressed their concern about this issue. Facts are these:

There IS a anomaly in the temperature curve that seem to coincidence nicely with our usage of fossil fuel. There was a cyclical "uptrend" before, but the way it's rising now does not have any match in historical data. You are welcome to look this up as I can't quite my source. Maybe I should go for "respected scientists".

We do NOT know whether this is a natural or a man-caused phenomena. If it is natural, good for us, if it's not, we probably won't know for certain until it's more or less too late. Bad for us.

One could conclude the gamble and stakes are just too big. We simply can't afford to take this risk. We certainly don't KNOW, but hell, I'd like for the earth to stay habitable.

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[Snocone]

one of the reasons that the Vikings didn't make permanent settlements in what is now Canada was the result of a "Mini-Ice Age" that occurred during the 15th Century.

Off by 500 years and it's the other way around, they colonized during a warm period. Far warmer than now -- Greenland really WAS green at the time, that name wasn't just an early real estate agent doing the PR.

So although it does definitely seem to be warmer now than a couple centuries back, it's still nowhere near as hot as a millenium back, and since the human race didn't die off then I have a bit of an issue crediting the Chicken Littles who foretell global catastrophe from a degree or two over the next century.

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[Kazir]

Come to think of it, let's clarify something here. What is being talked about is a limited lifespan for humans. The Earth will move on, and keep on doing what is doing, whether we are here or not. So far humans are a small blip on the Earth's time line.

Sometimes we think too much of ourselves. Is it all that important that the universe has developed a race that is sentient? Maybe, maybe not. Let's leave that one to the philosophers, theologians, cosmologists, and the nilhists.

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[drinkypoo]

Imagine the resources it would take to move 6 Billion people off the planet. They each need life support, supplies, food, propellant. Sounds like cleaning up things would be much easier. Instead of putting those resources into flying people into space, put it into clean-up.

I don't know if technology will lead the way to cleaning up the planet (likely the technology to control our ecosystem will become available but we will not use it for that purpose) but it will certainly lead the way to getting off of our planet.

We've all heard a lot about nanotechnology, nanomaterials, et cetera. But you don't even NEED them to make a space elevator. We could do it today, though at great cost - Such a project, if begun, would almost certainly be terminated before it was finished. I don't really think that making one today would be all that productive in any case. But it won't be too many more decades, I don't think, before it does become feasible.

And once you have a space elevator, it's nearly free (save for maintenance costs) to put things into orbit, especially compared with current costs.

Now, the corollary to this is that it will probably still be cheaper to clean up our planet (assuming it's possible, which I suspect largely depends on your definition of "clean up") than to terraform another planet and move people there. It might be cheaper to build space habitats, though, and move people there instead. At the point where we have orbital mining, refining, and manufacturing, that actually becomes fairly feasible using all those science-fiction methods, like blowing up a glob of steel like a balloon.

When it becomes inexpensive enough, we will go into space, for purely capitalistic reasons. I doubt we'll have many people living up there for some time because of the cost, but I think we will end up with quite a bit of industry in orbit. The more pollution you generate in space, the less you have to generate onplanet; And pollution in space can be shoved off toward this nuclear furnace we all orbit around, and forgotten about, at least on a human scale. So if you want to talk about cleaning up the planet...

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[hey!]

to clean up the planet we are on now, has anyone ever thought that it might not be possible?

Indeed.

I think the terminology you use is in itself too optimistic. "Clean up" makes it sound like its just a problem of moving gross quantities of matter from one place to another; just use some energy to reduce entropy here and dump the waste entropy into space.

Th reality is that we live on a tiny, but highly complex organic film on a big, dead rock. We are destroying biological information evolved by this system over millions of years by destroying habitat and species, essentially taking that organic complexity and turning it into waste entropy.

I don't know if we'll turn the planet into venus; you can't easily project something like this because there are complex feedback systems involved. Perhaps there are situations under which positive feedback could force huge changes in climate, but in terms of gradually accumulating anthropogenic factors people will die off in large numbers well before anything remotely as drastic as the venus scenario plays out. I expect that the world in a thousand years will still look a lot more like Earth than Venus, although possibly with a much larger or much smaller human population.

Enviornmentalists who like to think of the problem as the survival of the human race look down on people who see the environmental issue as one of aesthetic; I think the aesthetic folks may be closer to the truth. We're as likely to go extinct any time soon as the cockroach. I like to point out to my environmentalist friends that if "sustainability" is the sole criteria, we have nothing to worry about because "unsustainability" is by definition a short term condition. The real issue is do we want to have the conditions of equillibrium to occur when we have fouled the nest so badly our options are gone, or do we wish to control some of the conditions under which equillibrium is achieved.

Another way of phrasing the question: do you want the Earth to become a maximally exploited combination human feed lot/garbage pit? Or would you like to hand the next generation a world remotely as pleasant as the one we inherited?

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[drinkypoo]

If we ARE the cause of global warming, then, how come the trend of rising temps occured BEFORE cars have been invented??? It's CYCLICAL! Just like El Nino. The earth is stronger then ANY one being on this planet (ok, except GOD!! ).

This is a troll, right? Why else would you put Ievojah's title ("God") in all caps?

In any case, we do know that the warming and cooling cycle of the planet is just that -- a cycle. The Earth is a self-regulating body. What we don't know is what effects we're having on the cycle. And while El Nino is a natural cycle (Why the hell is something that killed millions called the child? Apologies to Henry Rollins) there were many who said that it exhibited some abnormal behavior, even for a bizarre weather phenomena.

We, as a species or collection thereof, have more power than any other species on the planet. We can burn cities to the ground with a device that you could pack along in the back of your Honda. We can refine minerals from the earth and shoot them into space. And we can, for a little while, halt the effects of such a vital thing as erosion (which forms quaint terrain effects like canyons) to make things more convenient for some upright brachiating mammals who drive around in noisy, stinky, metal and glass boxes.

If you don't think Nature gets upset about some of this stuff, think again. And consider this; We're chopping down rainforests, which can be considered a system for cooling and filtering atmospheric gases. We'll spilling oil into the oceans and killing the blue-green algae, which produces the majority of the oxygen that we (among other creatures and systems) consume. We're probably frying the ozone layer, or at least science leads us to believe so, so that the sun is harsher. We're filling the air with particulate matter finer than nature is wont to produce, raising cancer rates worldwide - Sometime, if you're bored, check out how cancer rates went sharply upward during the industrial revolution.

So maybe we won't disturb the planet all that much. I suspect that life on Earth will long outlast us. But if we kill ourselves off, well, that sure will be a bitch.

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[ahodgson]

Of course not. The population is _increasing_ faster than we could ever hope to ship people off.

Colonization is expansion, and covering our collective asses in case something happens to Earth. Promoting it as a way to escape a polluted Earth is crazy.

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[superyooser]

Chopping down trees is very "healthy" for the atmosphere, at least when done by logging corporations. Old trees don't grow very much, so there is little photosynthesis occuring -- in other words, they don't convert much CO2 to oxygen. When these old trees are cut down, new ones are planted. (Corporations have an economic incentive to protect and renew forests because they are their source of products to sell!) So the evil logging companies plant new trees, which, of course, grow much faster than the old trees. In order to grow faster, photosynthesis must occur more rapidly, which results in sucking up a lot more CO2 than those lazy, old, stagnant forests.

On another note, this really doesn't matter anyway as far as it relates to "global warming". Recall that 3/4 of the earth is covered by water, not land. The vast majority of oxygen that is released into the atmosphere comes from algae. Yes, algae. In fact, I have heard that some scientists assert that whatever happens (to plants) on land is "inconsequential" to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[Kazir]

to clean up the planet we are on now, has anyone ever thought that it might not be possible?

Imagine the resources it would take to move 6 Billion people off the planet. They each need life support, supplies, food, propellant. Sounds like cleaning up things would be much easier. Instead of putting those resources into flying people into space, put it into clean-up.

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[slashdot-me]

> Blah blah human lifespan blah blah unimportant blah blah small blip blah...

I may be a small blip on the galaxy's radar screen, but the rest of the galaxy is a small blip on mine. I care about the stuff that goes on in my house, neighborhood, state, country, and planet. In that order.

Ryan

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[Dr.Doom]

This is important to remember. Yes the Earth always changes, however, it is changing in a much shorter time span than ever before. How much has the local weather in your area changed in the past 10 years? 10 years?? For something that should be on an almost geological timescale?

Or think of it this way. Yes, all environmental concerns could be bogus, overinflated. We aren't affecting our environment it's just natural. In 50 years we'll recognize this and move on. But if we ARE affecting the environment, in 50 years we won't have any options about where to go. We won't be able to just go back and reset things.

We are conducting an experiment on a global scale. "What happens when we disrupt ecosystems and change the levels of atmospheric gases?" is the hypothesis. We don't know what the outcome will be because we can't even decide if we are affecting it. Seems like a big gamble to me at least.

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[Booker]

You really think that if it came to that, we'd actually move 6 billion people? I kinda doubt it.

For instance, I doubt we'd take the figure skaters... :)

---

Re:While it'd be much easier..

[ranton]

You are right. As far as nature is concerned, we are inconsequential (sp?). But as far as planets and stars are concerned, so is nature. The earth would live on even if all life on this planet ceased to exist.

Sentient life is as far above nature as nature is above simple minerals. We should do everything that we can to survive because defying nature is what we humans do best. Humans have been fighting nature and this planet since the first time we took up the plow. Why just stop now?

Ever Titrate 20 trillion gallons?

[PhilosopherKing]

From what I recall from several sources:
a) most oxygen from CO2 is done by ocean micro-organisms.
b) ever do titration in chemistry lab?
c) at some point *whoosh* the ocean chemistry can change in days just like titration experiments, because it is a titration experiment.
d) which would lead to an oceans-wide red tide
Leaving only the question, At what point does this occur?

As to demographic transition, lets look at China and India(the world's largest democracy). Both countries have huge populations that are/were boomming. As they (rightfully) demand their fair share of oil, plastic, iron, aluminum, nitrogen; you're looking at a far more drastic shift in global balances. (P.S. I think 1 billion homosapiens would be just right, to many puppies.)

You seem to be under the impression that there is some natural mathematical steady state that we approach as time approaches infinity. I simply ask for proof.

Why settle the stars? There have been at least 3 massive mass extinctions in earth's history. Dinosaurs with an asteroid to the head & another where all multi-cellular life croaked in an earlier episode. Best to get off the earth so we can avoid being wiped out by either an asteroid or a super-bug that breaks down multi-cellular cohesion. (I don't want to liquify, do you?, the super-bug thing is a theory, no proof that this is what happened, I like to think a mutant-folded protien, like prion, was responsible)

Re:Ever Titrate 20 trillion gallons?

[X]

>They're also becoming richer. An increase in
>wealth equals a decrease in population growth
>rate. This is common knowlege to any high school
>social sciences teacher. This is the glimmer of
>the natural mathematical push towards the steady
>state. I don't claim that as any sort of proof,

Such statements are based on GROSS assumptions about the social fabric of a country. Kuwait's population growth exceeds that of Kazakhstan, and I think Saudi Arabia has a bigger growth rate than either.

So while a social sciences high school teacher might say this, an expert anthropologist would disagree.

Packaging

[DickBreath]

Every item you use today, think of how much energy it took to create and will take to dispose of that item. Think of where that energy is coming from. Because it's out of sight it's out of mind.

Think of the energy it took to create the packaging for the item. (maybe even more than the item itself!) And the waste that packaging will be. For instance, compare clothes for a Mattel Barbie doll to the packaging they come in. Shiny paper. Bright colored ink printing job.

In fact Marketing driven packaging helps to ruin the earth. Marketing's contribution to society.

Re:What massive global climate change.

[RayChuang]

Or to be more specific, there's this thermonuclear furnace 93 million miles away called the Sun that's a far better determinant on our climate than any human activity.

If research into our geological history is correct, in the age of the dinosaurs Earth temperatures were actually several degrees higher, with warm swamps even at the middle latitudes and large forests of ferns.

In our recorded history, we're actually living mostly in a period of COLDER temperatures than normal based on our geological history, thanks to several Ice Ages from 65 million years ago to now. What "global warming" may really be is our Earth finally returning to the higher temperatures of 100 million years ago.

Babelfish translation

[Tiroth]

I am very interested in acquiring the book dicussed in the article; anyone know where I can pick up a copy of "The of university verses in a groove-brightly?"

Re:Another Liberal fearmonger

[jafac]

Um, not really, the Christian God doesn't pass judgement, he forgives.

Inequalities here on Earth are a symptom of the fact that material existance is imperfect.

You know what? You're absolutely right. It does NOT matter one bit what any hopelessly lost soul, or saved soul does with their Earthly time and money.

Everyone goes to Heaven. If they want to.

While we're here on Earth, we were given the Earth to take care of it. God does expect us to take care of it. It's our assigned duty. But in the end, your soul matters more, because eventually, the Earth will be swallowed up by the sun, the sun turn into a black hole and evaporate into Hawking radiation, and the very protons will decay, and nothing will exist in the material sense anymore. When you're in Heaven, blink, and you'll miss it, because eternity lasts a long time.

Re:Does a smart man always tell the whole truth?

[On Lawn]

predictions by Carl Sagan (who was a planetary scientist and an expert on the greenhouse effect and Venus).

Don't get me wrong. I loved how he pronounced "billions and billions" aboard his starship "imagionation" and reading his Encyclopedia Galactica. Contact is cool to. The man knew a lot about Venus, etc...

But how much can you call someone an expert who has witnessed 1/billionth of the life of a place they have never visited, but flew over occasionaly?

He's only an expert relative to a whole planet of people who know nothing about what is going on. I also lump Hawking in that category. Definately smarter and more informed than I am, but in the whole scheme of things we are both microbes, and they is just a bit smarter.

I think its *very* important to have such a reality check every now and again. We still know absolutely nothing. Heck we really can't get very far off this rock (earth) yet.

In reply to Hawking

[ackthpt]

Stephen Hawking predicts, that mankind will not survive on earth for another millenium.

I'm amazed we got past 1961...

Hawking fears that the atmosphere will become hotter and contain more and more acid like the atmosphere of the planet Venus, so that men can no longer live on earth.

Well, all that coal and oil once was up here and it was a pretty tropical place. It was buring all that carbon that made this place so damn cold.

The only solution would be to colonize the space and find another planet to live on."

How about Mars? That's really cold, even on a good day.

If man were to colonize other worlds it stands to reason that we'd have to take agriculture with us. Now there's a topic for some serious genetic engineered crops...


--
Chief Frog Inspector

Re:In reply to Hawking

[Ralph Bearpark]

If man were to colonize other worlds it stands to reason that we'd have to take agriculture with us.

No problem - we'll just farm space fungus.

Regards, Ralph.

Pantywaist?!?

Re:There is no such thing as stasis...

[Stoutlimb]

Not exactly stasis, but there are stable ground states, both in atomic physics, and in biology.

Honeybees and flowers have survived tens (hundreds?) of millions of years by achieving a steady-state symbiosis with each other and the rest their environment.

Call me an optimist, but I think I am seeing humans moving towards that. Demographic transition, breeding (cows, chickens), advanced breeting (genetic modification), and the decline of fossil fuels are all pushing us into this direction.

But then again some opportunist could sell some Palestinians a few atomic bombs, then we could see the mother of all population corrections. So it's up in the air!

Hope and strive, thats the best we can do!

By the way, to directly answer your question, I don't think genetic engineering is the last word, or even a good word yet. I just hope that all this technological change will finally settle us down into a self-reinforcing groove that is good for us. Whether its medicinal lentils and horses born with wheels, or transporters and food replicators is anyone's guess. Could be both?

Bork! Bork! Bork!

Ewww...gross...

[OlympicSponsor]

Hawking On Earth's Lifespan

cchcchcch...ptoo. Take that, Earth's lifespan.
--

Nanotech disaster could happen much sooner

[websensei]

While we're talking about life-on-earth-ending scenarios:

One screwup (or madman's success) and nanotech bots could turn *everything* into a gooey grey glob. There would be nothing left and earth would become one giant boobytrap for whatever unfortunate alien visitors come... ever.

I think this is a real possibility. And it could happen this century, maybe even this decade.

Or we'll be careful and invent good safeguards and this dire prediction will be seen as alarmist malarkey.

I still haven't decided. Have you?

In the year 2525...

[mmaddox]

...does anyone else hear that song in their heads?

Truthfully, though, I wonder how much credibility that we can give Mr. Hawking's opinions on such matters. His excellence in theoretical physics notwithstanding, I don't think he has expertise in all the disciplines that such a prediction requires. Still, he makes a valid point about the remarkable short-sightedness of man, and our horrible unwillingness to plan for future generations.

I wonder if anyone will pay more attention to him than they did to our dear Dr. Sagan?

Re:In the year 2525...

[Mad Hughagi]

It's kind of sad really...

Some of the greatest people of our time all agree that we need to start making changes to prolong the existance of our planet, yet the general public hardly seems to listen until it's right in their face. Although Hawking might be a bit drastic in his prediction, the process by which our planet is being ravaged is very real.

Eventually if enough people of academic stature speak up maybe one day humanity will be able to overcome our fixation with the 'now'.

Not a solution

[roystgnr]

Anyone want to estimate the cost, per immigrant, of putting someone on Earth in a viable orbital (or Mars) colony? Anyone reading my posts here might recognize me as a space nut^H^H^Henthusiast, and I'd say a million dollars per person is a good figure to shoot for. Even Robert Zubrin wouldn't put a one-way ticket to Mars lower than $300,000 without dipping into the "well, it's theoretically possible" technology pool. In any case, the travel expenses are going to be overshadowed by the cost of having the people already there (in the case of Mars) digging you out someplace to live, mining ice for you to drink and grow things with, and generally making a home on the other side.

So let's play one of my favorite games, "Fun with Almanac Numbers":

250,000 more people on the Earth every year, plus
6,000,000 one thousandth of the current population, equals
6,250,000 people we need to evacuate each year.

times 1,000,000 dollars per emigrant, equals
6.25 trillion dollars per year.

I can't find any good figures for World GDP, but this is somewhere around a fourth of it. Feel the burn. Of course, the proper figure to compare to is not World GDP, but the cost of our best alternative, the "not fucking up the Earth" plan. Opinions vary, but 6.25 trillion a year is an order of magnitude above most of them.

Besides, if we all went to Mars we'd just end up terraforming it eventually anyway; we might as well practice terraforming Earth first.

Translations?

[vslashg]

Translations, anyone? Babelfish reports that Hawkings says "The of university verses in a groove-brightly."

Re:Translations?

[Tower]

Come on, if you can't accept that basic truth, you might as well not read the rest of the article. It's a basic principle!

--

Re:Does a smart man always tell the whole truth?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I wanted to know how to configure my 2000 node Beowulf cluster, I'd ask a computer scientist. If I wanted to know how the universe began, I'd ask Stephen Hawking. If I wanted to know the prognosis for the world's ecosystems, I probably *wouldn't* ask Stephen Hawking, who is a physicist for chrissakes! I'd ask an ecologist, who is someone who makes it their business to understand how the world's environment works. I'm always a little surprised when really intelligent people assume that because they know how a computer or a particle accelerator works, they are qualified to make pronouncements about how Mother Nature works. There's a great quote from Bruce Sterling which goes vaguely like this: "It doesn't matter if you've got the world fastest computer sitting on your desk, if the temperature outside is 160 degrees Fahrenheit for four weeks straight!". People who think that global warming and the ongoing mass extinction of biodiversity we're experiencing is a made-up communist scam or irrelevant to them because they've got an air conditioner are completely out to lunch. Check out the Ecological Society of America's website (http://esa.sdsc.edu/). This is not an 'environmentalist' organization, it's a group that represents the preminent biologists of our time. Global warming and the unprecedented loss of species that we are causing are not a fringe opinion in science - they are well documented 'facts', at least as far as anything is considered a fact. By conservative estimate, if we don't get our act together the next century will see the extinction of half the species on earth and catastrophic effects on human health due to widespread pollution, environmental degradation and effects on agriculture, water, etc. etc. etc. Wishful thinking that "everything will be okay once we invent nanotechnology and yadda yadda yadda" is crazy talk - we have to live here in the meantime. Despite what Kevin Kelly said in his book, putting ecosystems back together again is very very difficult - we don't really know how to do it, and most attempts to do so fail miserably. And by the way, don't get your hopes up about emigrating to Mars. There won't be room on the space bus for anyone except maybe Steve Hawking's brain and the couple of dozen zillionaires who can afford to leave the other 7 billion of us behind on the steaming cesspool that used to be Earth.

Re:Gross is all you need sometimes.

[X]

Yeah, but in the absense of conclusive evidence (i.e. either argument can be supported by facts) doesn't it make sense to suggest there is little or no correlation? That actually it's entirely seperate factors (which may have a similar utopian effect as you're describing) which are influencing population growth, or at the very least which are much more significant?

Here's the fish's take

[St. Intrope]

Stephen Hawking sees black for the human life

The British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking fears that mankind will not survive a " further millenium ". In a lecture in Edinburgh explained Hawking, either a " accident or the ground electrode warming " would extinguish the life on earth. Mankind can outlive only if it settles on another planet, let the almost completely gelaehmte scientist its listeners with the conception of its new book " The of university verses in a groove-brightly " know. The scientist suffers from the paralysis illness Amyotrophe Lateralsklerose (WHEN) and can inform itself only by language computers.

" I fear that the atmosphere becomes ever hotter, and that it becomes, meant like Venus bubbling sulfuric acid " Hawking. " I make myself concerns around the greenhouse effect. " Mankind can survive a further millenium only if it spreads into " space. " Without the " Kolonialisierung " of other planets mankind of becoming extinct is threatened.

Major task of the theoretical physics 21. Century is it to offer to mankind a continuous theory about the happening in the universe. " we believe, we the end pieces of a complete and uniform theory found, but in the center still much is to fill out ", said Hawking. (dpa) (jk/c't)


--Fire up the clue combine and harvest a clue!

Re:Here's the fish's take

[GungaDan]

Hawking's British?!? Funny - he has almost no accent.

Re:Here's the fish's take

[kyz]

If you believe he's actually MC Hawking, then he has the same accent as the Amiga's Say program. Therefore, he has a cowboy yankee accent and must be American.

Re:Here's the fish's take

[phil reed]

From www.freetranslation.com:

Stephen Hawking sees blackly for the human life

The British Astrophysiker Stephen Hawking fears that the humanity will not survive a "further millennium". Hawking declared in a presentation in Edinburgh, either an "accident or the Erderwärmung" would become the life on the earth extinguish. The humanity could only survive, if she herself on another planet ansiedle, had the almost completely paralyzed scientist its listeners known in the presentation of its new book "The universe in a Nutshell".

The scientist suffers under the paralysis disease Amyotrophe Lateralsklerose (AS) and can notify himself only per Sprachcomputer.

"I fear, that the atmosphere always hotter becomes, and that it like Venus of sulfur acid be simmered becomes", meant Hawking. "I make me concerns about the hothouse effect." The humanity could only survive a further millennium, if it itself in "the space spreads." Without the "Kolonialisierung" of other planets, the humanity of the extinction would be threatened.

Let it be the head task of the theoretical physics of the 21st century of offering a complete theory over the events in the universe to the humanity. "We believe, we have the Endstücke of a complete and uniform theory found, but in the middle is yet much auszufüllen", said Hawking.


...phil

Translation from babelfish

[/dev/niall]

Stephen Hawking sees black for the human life

The British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking fears that mankind will not survive a " further millenium ". In a lecture in Edinburgh explained Hawking, either a " accident or the ground electrode warming " would extinguish the life on earth. Mankind can outlive only if it settles on another planet, let the almost completely gelaehmte scientist its listeners with the conception of its new book " The of university verses in a groove-brightly " know. The scientist suffers from the paralysis illness Amyotrophe Lateralsklerose (WHEN) and can inform itself only by language computers.

" I fear that the atmosphere becomes ever hotter, and that it becomes, meant like Venus bubbling sulfuric acid " Hawking. " I make myself concerns around the greenhouse effect. " Mankind can survive a further millenium only if it spreads into " space. " Without the " Kolonialisierung " of other planets mankind of becoming extinct is threatened.

Major task of the theoretical physics 21. Century is it to offer to mankind a continuous theory about the happening in the universe. " we believe, we the end pieces of a complete and uniform theory found, but in the center still much is to fill out ", said Hawking. ( dpa ) ( jk / c't)

No doubt.

[Operandi]

Considering my other post and the accelerated rate at which 'progress' is made (ie. There has been greater advances in the past 10 years than there was during the 50 or even 100 years before it.) I do not doubt this at all, sadly.

Regards

Heat is the only problem long term

[joshv]

With enough energy you can eventually create a system where heat is the only waste product. Basically this would consist of capturing and recycling or storing or re-using all 'toxic' waste products. This would require a lot of energy, as we all know it would result in the production of a lot of waste heat, which due to certain laws of thermodynamics is unavoidable.

I am almost certain that eventually most all of our technology will be 'clean' - it will have to be. We will eventually figure out SOME way of economicaly tapping a small fraction of the energy that the sun disgorges into empty space, and have enough free energy to recycle everything ad-infinitum.

The problem then becomes waste heat. That is a more difficult problem. You have to radiate it away. And since we are on the planet's surface about the only place we have to radiate it is into the atmosphere, where most of it will be absorbed. Sure your factories recycle all of their CO2 or methane, but they now produce waste heat which heats the atmosphere anyway.

Not sure if there is a solution to this, other than perhaps 'piping' heat into space somehow, or reducing the solar input into the atmosphere with orbital 'shades'.

-josh

Re:I'd hate to see the Earth become unihabitable..

[raytracer]

Gravity is a harsh mistress!

Re:I'd hate to see the Earth become unihabitable..

[The Good Reverend]

The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil is an awesome book. Along the same lines is Eliezer S. Yudkowsky's Meaning of life page, at http://www.sysopmind.com/tmol-f aq/ meaningoflife.html. It's like a sped-up Kurzweil. It's all very cool =)

The Good Reverend

The Other Solution

[loosenut]

The only solution would be to colonize the space and find another planet to live on.

Either that or we just let the human race die out.

Re:Earth won't survive! Sez man who shouldnt survi

[SpryGuy]

The real question is 'how many will survive'...

Consider: if the climate changes drastically, our sources of food will die off and/or migrate. Our water sources (and simultaneously some of our transportation sources) could dry up completely.

It honestly looks like our oil reserves won't last out the century... certainly not at today's pumping rates. That alone will cause major anguish, trials, and tribulations... wars, famines, economic collapse, etc.

Now take away foods that used to grow well that can't because of global climate changes that dry up the American mid-west into a desert, and that eliminate sources for drinking water all along the central and south west.

Sure, some humans will survive somewhere... but in what capacity? A few tribes up in Canada?

No sir. It does not look good for the human race.

- Spryguy

trashbin earth

[_shanti_]

hi,

i have spent lot of time with the topics of global warming and global-pollution
.. i also think that Mr. Hawkins is a master mind .
. but i its a kind of cowardly runaway to spread into space and leaving our mother-planet wasted ..
where intelligent and sensitive lifeforms lived million years before .. heading towards virgin planets in vain to be there first and to have a right to own something there !!! HA !

if we ( that includes me, you and you and YOU) are not able to save this planet which we messed up in the last 120 years .. SORRY .. how long do you think our children would stay alive .. if we couldnt show them how to do this right ?? ..

i mean ,.. in the next 30 years shits on the fan !! and there is no chance to reach next 'Center Park' in time ..

.. i am working in IT for about 6 years now .. hardcore ..a branche far away from what humanship really needs .. totally virtual .. unreal .. i mean (wo)mankind dont need this shit at all .. you want to communicate .. try talking .. !!
however.. sometimes i have the feeling of doing the wrong job .. because it seem that everybody believes he could leave with the first shuttle leaving EARTH .. instead of caring and doing something productive to save this fine place ..

instead of tuning his ridiculous MySQL or ipfilter ...

i mean its funny .. but if noone cares to stay alive .. then he is too stupid to be alive ..
i think its time ...
i have experienced great thing, especially in this 'open!' generation .. a lot of energie and thoughts, goodwill and power

.. respect ..
but soon .. more NOw that soon .. we should use this to survife

.. i know that there are many coooooool and leeet guys, who will think its very funny to write some funny repost to this .. but i would prefer to see answers of people who see whats really happening OUT THERE ! ...

DO THINK IT OK THE WAY WE CAR_E??

-s-

Re:Ultra-smart getting concerned for human race

[grappler]

It's an enumerated type, not a pointer. There are a small number of possible places the foot can go, and a switch statement takes care of it. Of course, mouth is the default so it didn't need to be explicitly given at all, but it improves readability.

Thanks for asking :-|

About Salt

[NuclearArchaeologist]

According to the Salt Institute, salt is safe to eat. While it may be a bad idea to eat like an Accadian, you will have a hard time killing someone with it. In rats, the amount of salt it took to kill 1/2 of those exposed was 4,000 mg/kg. A first order calculation goes like this, a 50 kg man would have to eat 200 grams of salt to have a coin toss chance of dying. I imagine this man would vomit first, but persistance sometimes pays off. Salt is sold in 780 gram (26 ounce or 1 pound 10 ounces) containers. You would have to eat more than 1/4th of it. That's less than I thought, but much more than I could ever imagine eating.

Poison and power and Hawking, oh my!

[Gondola]

There really are several issues involved here.

One is the poisoning of the environment. This means nuclear waste, chemical waste including commercial and manufacturing waste and by-products, and consumer trash. This includes the CFCs that give the Aussies those great tans by gaping open that hole in the ozone layer.

Another is the "poisoning" of the atmosphere by an increase in carbon dioxide and methane. Harmless by themselves, but which will eventually cause the "greenhouse effect" we hear so much about -- which some say has already started.

Another issue is alternate forms of energy, which someone above (sorry, I didn't reply directly) has stated are reasonably inadequate at the moment but which show promise. I firmly believe that Necessity is the mother of Invention and that as supplies of fossil fuels became more scarce, prices will go up and alternatives will become affordable and viable.

The atmosphere will eventually settle itself. Ecosystems may get trashed and species may extinguish left and right, but life will go on even if it is without Homo Stupiditus. We may not be able to adapt, but many other species will.

The worst part is the poisoning through nuclear, chemical, and other types of waste. This will cause the most problems, and will eventually lead to stricter and stricter guidelines on manufacturing and waste disposal. We eventually, even as consumers, will not be able to buy anything without the express understanding that 100% of it will be recycled, with stiff fines to enforce it. The process of recycling will need to be refined to the point that we can reuse just about everything. It will also behoove recycling firms to comb over dumps and recycle old trash as that will likely be profitable.

Basically, I think mother nature is very forgiving, and where she is not forgiving, we will pay... and if we pay the ultimate price, life will go on without us. The only way I can see total destruction of life on earth is through a nuclear war that poisons a significant portion of the atmosphere and freezes everything off.

However, I think sea life and plant life will eventually recover from even that...

Ecopsychology

[Muttonhead]

That's the oldest trick in the book: looking for some planet to inhabit. Sheez!

How about we look at ourselves for a change with these psychopathalogical models applied to the ecological crisis, part of Ecopsychology, a term coined by Theodore Roszak. A lot of this is from Ralph Metzner's book Green Psychology.

1. Organic Pathology - Excessive population growth is analogous to a malignant tumor.
2. Anthropocentrism - The world is seen in a hierarchical fashion with humans at the top and the earth and other living beings as tools for the humans to use at will. This is in contrast to ancient cultures who viewed animals as brothers; a lateral relationship as opposed to hierarchical. "There is an implicit meaning of assumed superiority and right to dominate others." (p.84)
3. Developmental Fixation - Arrested development; a culture stops growing or takes pathways which are self destructive to an ideal mode of growth; a perpetual state of immaturity. Lack of rites of passage. "[Westernized man] may now be the possessors of the world's flimsiest identity structures, childish adults." (Paul Shepard, Nature & Madness, p.40)
4. Autism - The human species has become autistic in relationship to the natural world. Traced to a Cartesian, mechanistic world view. "Autistic children do not seem to hear or see or feel their mother's presence, they do not respond to touch or voice or gesture." (p.88)
5. Addiction - "Our inability to stop our suicidal and ecocidal behavior fits the clinical definition of addiction or compulsion: behavior that continues in spite of the fact that the individual knows that it is destructive to family, work, and social relationships." (p.89)
6. Narcissism - "...is a personality disorder characterized by an inflated and grandiose self-image as well as feelings of entitlement that mask deep-seated feelings of unworthiness and emptiness." (p.90) Advertising typically tells us two things: 1) you're inadequate as you are, and 2) our product is the solution. This overheats consumption and thus, waste. Do we need a new science that can conclusively measure the destructive effects of implicit media images?
7. Amnesia - "We have forgotten something our ancestors once know and practiced--certain attitudes and kinds of perception, an ability to empathize and identify with non-human life, respect for the mysterious, and humility in relationship to the infinite complexities of the natural world." (p.91) Also suggested is traumatic amnesia which might have been caused by a massive earthquake, flood or volcano causing a disruption in ritual life and an adoption of a scarcity, warlike or conquering model of life. If this happened, the new mode of life could easily spread to other cultures as they were conquered and assimilated.
8. Repression of the Ecological Unconscious - A Western sense of rootedness with the earth has been pushed into an unconscious realm.
9. Dissociation - Splitting. "Nazi doctors, who were able to enjoy listening to Beethoven in the garden and playing with children after a day of torturing and killing people.... It's not that our knowledge and understanding of Earth's complex and delicate web of interdependence is vaguely and inchoately lodged in some forgotten basement of our psyche. We have the knowledge of our impact on the environment; we can perceive the pollution and degradation of the land, the waters, the air--but we do not attend to it, and we do not connect that knowledge with other aspects of our total experience. Perhaps it would be more accurate, and fair, to say that individuals feel unable to respond to the natural world appropriately because the political, economic, and educational institutions in which we are all involved all have this dissociation built into them." (p.95) Mind over matter, the mind is good--the body is bad; thinking but not feeling. "There's no place for feelings at work." The ego struggling to control the id; opus contra naturum; Becoming closer to God "up there," but further away from the earth "right here." Mind/Body split.

This last idea is one I heard Dr. Andrew Weil mention in a recorded talk.

1. Genetic Fatal Flaw - Our evolution as a species might be too good. With increased mental capacity evolved over millions of years we have created an imbalance with the ability of natural processes to keep us in check. This could be seen as a psychotic element of our genetic makeup which lets us destroy our own environment, destroying ourselves in the process, causing our branch of the family tree to become extinct. What would life have been like if we had evolved from herbivores?

Why Settle the Starts

[NuclearArchaeologist]

Because we can! More is better, unless you don't like people.

"Shouldn't survive?"

[Wire Tap]

So, if I am correct in your logic, you would also surmize that Earth shouldn't survive?

Human beings are indeed a clever bunch, and while we may be able to adapt to new things quite well, unless there is a huge push for colonization in space, we might be too late.

As of now, colonization seems more like a dream than anything else. With all the legislation in the way, and all the religious fanatics who are against the colonization of space - it will be a wonder if we get there in another 500 years.

I know I'm hopin' though. :-)

Re:"Shouldn't survive?"

[gstovall]

What religious fanatics would those be? Can't be the Christians; we're all raring to go evangelize the (non-existent) alien races on other (non-life-bearing) planets. Better brush up on my terraforming techniques.

Re:"Shouldn't survive?"

[mlong]

That would be the dolphins on Europa. Unfortunately since they only got fins and have a huge ice layer on top of them, their attempts to build rockets have failed.

Re:"Shouldn't survive?"

[gstovall]

Ooh! I forgot about them! Guess I better start designing a space port for the Southern Baptist Convention. Maybe we'll just lease from one of the Japanese space agencies.

Re:"Shouldn't survive?"

[mmcarch]

"Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish!" Regards, Flipper

Read Ishmael, Story of B, My Ishmael

[gavinhall]

Posted by polar_bear:

Daniel Quinn makes a good case for why the Earth is quite likely to become unable to support human life in "Ishmael," "The Story of B," and "My Ishmael." He raises some very interesting ideas that are worth consideration - even if you don't agree, they're worth thinking about seriously. (I happen to agree, but I can see why many wouldn't...)

I wonder if this kind of statement by Hawking will get taken seriously by the masses or not. Steven Hawking is dead brilliant, but Mother Culture has taught the majority of the populace to ignore these types of predictions because they conflict with the teachings of society...

Temperature Extremes

[maroberts]

From my recollection of Earths history, the climate has been through some pretty dramatic changes over the ages, and in general the age of the dinosaurs was warmer than it is now, so how come all this doom and gloom?

There is no denying that global warming will have some pretty catastrophic affects, and may cause famine disease hunger flooding etc. but I doubt it will go as far as Mr Hawking suggests.

Anyway, living in England, it would perhaps be nice to need Factor 50 suncream, instead of Gore-Tex, before venturing out the door!

Re:Temperature Extremes

[nescafe]

Hmmm... if I recall correctly, the major climactic changes that happened were due to a fscking huge chunk of rock hitting the planet at the time, not a forseeable consequence of weather patterns. Besides, the environment may be intolerable in 750 -- 1000 years to our species as it is now, but given the pace of change who can say what our species will be like then, or if it will even exist in a form we can comprehend?

Congratulations! You've been brainwashed

[Pentagram]

Congratulations! You've just been brainwashed by all those big corporations that want you sit back and continue chucking whatever they like into the environment.

CO2 levels are higher this year than they have been for twenty million years. Now this could be:

a) Coincidence (1 in 20,000,000)
b) The fact that we're pumping the shit into the atmosphere every day from millions of cars, thousands of aeroplanes and thousands of factories.

You can't alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere with those sort of quantities without affecting the weather. More CO2 == bigger greenhouse effect. Relatively simple chemistry.

What I find amazingly arrogant is that you call this extremism? YOUR view is the extremist version. Almost every climatologist you can find disagrees with you. Jesus Christ, even the Ameri can s aren't that stupid!

The arrogance continues! You accuse Stephen Hawking, arguably one of the greatest scientists in the world today of swallowing junk science? So perhaps you can tell us your great contribution to science that gives you the authority to be able to decide better than him what is and isn't junk science?


---

Re:Congratulations! You've been brainwashed

[theDigitizer]

CO2 levels are always changing. There are soo many many many many many many many many many plants, and all they breathe is CO2, and let's not mention plankton. When Volcanoes erupt, a lot of CO2 ends up in the atmosphere. A LOT. Now with that in mind, lets remember that they've been erupting since the earth was formed, so this is nothing new to the biosphere. I can't claim to be any expert, but I've also read studies that claim the last big Ice Age was caused by the "leeching" of CO2 out of the atmosphere by the raising of Himalayan plateau. Greenhouse science does have it's basis, but often, scientists will come up with findings and those finding will reveal shocking numbers, predictions, and more studies are done in that direction of the "shocking findings" and lo and behold, next thing you know, special interest is all up in arms and something has to be done, of course. There is some truthfulness to the original thread here. There is increased Sun activity. I read some findings that had satellite based temperature readings, and when compared to the same data on the ground, HMMMM, it matched. Meaning that Sun directy affects our temperature on Earth. Wow, what a surprise. Greenhouse effect studies should not be discounted, but probably re-examined with this factored in, AND I would like to add that most of this science is about 30-35 years old at best, and we really just haven't been watching Earth's climate pattern's long enough to make any concrete science theories or predictions. I would have everyone remember that Earth is sooooooo much bigger than us, and will survive just about anything we could possibly throw at it. What this article IS talking about again, is how Prof. Hawking doesn't think we'll be able to live HERE after 1000 years, with the way things are going. So, what should be done? We should keep watching and gathering data, and NOT dumping a bunch of CO2 into the atmosphere from cars, power plants, and everything else, certainly wouldn't be a bad idea. "Digitize Everything"

Ultra-smart getting concerned for human race

[grappler]

Seems like when really smart people at the top of their field who have basically got it made, and need no longer worry about the things most of us might worry about, they heed a higher calling and focus their attention on the future of the human race, or the planet. Remember, Bill Joy did that too, to name another.

You know it's true...

[G-Man]

...cuz MC Hawking is gonna drop some mad science on yo ass...

Re:I'd hate to see the Earth become unihabitable..

[zephc]

Fear not, citizen. There are ALWAYS other options. My favorite is our gradual (over the next century) move rom carbon, organic bodies to nano-sized artificial life forms :) (read The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil)

---

Re:Man will not need to colonize another planet.

[_shanti_]

hi
i have no problems believing that nature will survife humans..

but i also think that humans should never be wiped out (neither by themselves) .. but i think it would be GOOD and PRODUCTIVE that stupid people should die out (i dont mean handicapped people!)

but if you mention the last 1000y's .. in fact all the GOODIES we developed in the last 200 years ( a1/5th of 1000) has caused this .. and especially its not the inventions but how people thought .. and how they still think !!!.. and how they are going to KEEP thinking !!! ..


peace
-c-

in English

[jjr]

The British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking fears that mankind will not survive a " further millenium ". In a lecture in Edinburgh explained Hawking, either a " accident or the ground electrode warming " would extinguish the life on earth. Mankind can outlive only if it settles on another planet, let the almost completely gelaehmte scientist its listeners with the conception of its new book " The of university verses in a groove-brightly " know. The scientist suffers from the paralysis illness Amyotrophe Lateralsklerose (WHEN) and can inform itself only by language computers.

" I fear that the atmosphere becomes ever hotter, and that it becomes, meant like Venus bubbling sulfuric acid " Hawking. " I make myself concerns around the greenhouse effect. " Mankind can survive a further millenium only if it spreads into " space. " Without the " Kolonialisierung " of other planets mankind of becoming extinct is threatened.

Major task of the theoretical physics 21. Century is it to offer to mankind a continuous theory about the happening in the universe. " we believe, we the end pieces of a complete and uniform theory found, but in the center still much is to fill out ", said Hawking. ( dpa ) ( jk / c't)

Bad karma...

[BrK]

I doubt the world, or society in general can last much longer at the rate we're going. Besides, this is a great way for Hawking to gain eternal worship. If he's right, everyone will look back and see him as a visionary. Of course, they won't be able to look back for long, because they'll all be dead.

What MC Hawking conveniently left out...

[falser]

Is that he implies that humanity has to begin planning now for the eventual exodus of the planet earth. Not everyone can go because there is not enough spacecrafts. So we must selectively choose the brightest and most creative people in the planet to lead the next generations of humans into space. The ones who will be chosen first are the engineers, doctors, artists, programmers, astronauts, and *cough*cough* Macro Physicists who perform Gangsta Rap on the side.

"I can only show you Linux... you're the one who has to read the man pages."

MY GOD! OF COURSE!!!!

[The Dodger]

What's the question nobody's asking, the question that noone's even thought of, the answer to which could save humanity?

What would Brian Boitano do?!

D.
..is for diddly-dee diddle-eye dee...

Excuse me...

[InfinityWpi]

...if I don't run out and get end-of-the-world insurance. Sometime in the next thousand years is a very vague notion. Think back to how much changed in the last thousand years. Pretty muh 95% of technology. Now, look at what we have, and image that as just 5% of what could be possible.

By the time Earth's no longer habitable, we'll have the technology to clean it up, or move elsewhere, or do whatever we feel like doing.

Or is this just an excuse to get peopel worried about the Y3K crisis?

Re:Excuse me...

[SpryGuy]

Well, it could happen a lot sooner, and a lot more quickly, and maybe not in the way we're expecteting...

Read last months' "Discover" magazine's cover article on 20 ways the human race could perish in the future ('future' being defined as 'anytime tomorrow on').

There are lots of threats bubbling and seething beneath the conscious level of the everyday consumer. Disease, famine, astaroids/comets, global warming, nuclear war, ozon depletion, etc., etc.

- Spryguy

Nature, Life, "Science," the order of Things

[ant_tmwx]

This is a prediction, like the description states. A semi-depressing one, but...

Life seems to have come pretty far, billions of years they predict I think, it would be a shame to see all this work on our planet (or at least humanity - "Oh the humanity!") come to nought in a few short centuries.

The fact is though, that "Science" is not Knowledge or Truth. It is as much guessing as religion (& I'd rather put my trust in God). Ideas about the earth's past and future are just that: ideas & conjecture.

We barely understand what is happening to us right now, to our bodies & our environment. Science & Medicine are JUST getting off the ground, we are not that high yet. From our limited knowledge, we can not extrapolate back millions of years in the past, or a thousand in the future.

Humans don't live very long. This is like asking one of those insects who live 24 hours to understand the seasons, changes, and fluctuations of nature over a year or a few years. Neither has long enough to observe the natural order of things to know much about the whole rest of time.

So...do something that you CAN do. Waste less. Be kind to others, make their lives better in small ways. Help feed someone who is starving, or give shelter to those without. (Don't donate to a group to do this, DO IT YOURSELF. At least try it once & you'll see the benefit). Be thankful we're rich enough to have monitors to read this off of. If we act this way, I think we can change some things.

Love God, and Love your others as you Love yourself.

ant
--We're not quite at Deep Thought yet.

There's a bigger threat

[kallisti]

Check out the Super Volcano. Supposedly, one exists in Yellowstone and is 40000 years overdue to go BANG.

According to this an earlier eruption may have almost wiped out the human race.

It's the Economy, STUPID!

[SpryGuy]

Okay, so while everyone is battling it out ("Global warming is BS" v.s. "Global warming is Real") and making arguments over whether humans really could destroy the ecosystem or not, I have some news for all of ya...

It's the economy, stupid.

The ecosystem is remarkably resilient, this is true. But it really doesn't take much pushing for whole swaths of land to become much harsher to survive in (and conversely, large swaths of previously uninhabitable land to become much more friendly). Think about raising the temperature a few degrees... Texas, Arazona, New Mexico, and Nevada dry up. Without water to support people, crops, and live-stock, economies collapse, and people are on the move. Meanwhile, large areas of Canada become bread-baskets for the world :-)

That's all find and dandy within our borders. We can take the influx of people from one area and deal. But try taking it across borders, and you end up with a situation we call 'war'.

Man doesn't even have to really be the root cause. What if the normal variablility of the sun and the earth cause major global climactic change. It's not like we have no evidence of this in the past... we have PLENTY. Think of the economic impact. Maybe humans would survive, but our current society/civilization most porbably wouldn't/couldn't. It's pretty darn fragile.

And forget 1000 years. Think about 100 years, when there's not much oil left to speak of. Will we have any real fuel sources available to us to take up the slack? Solar, wind, and hydro power simply don't have the predictability, availablity, or energy density to take over for oil. Nuclear? Fusion? There's certainly no real plans for the former, and the current results aren't looking good for the latter...

A major economic collapse, and the widespread war, famine, and disease that will result, are huge threats to humankind. Global climate change will only add to these problems. With all the short-sighted, short-term thinking and planning going on, we'll be lucky to have any real civilization in a thousand year's time.

All you SUV drivers can go back to whining about how supply and demand has jacked up your fuel expenses

- Spryguy

Re:I'd hate to see the Earth become unihabitable..

[dimator]

Wasnt Kurzweil the crazy guy from the X-files movie that told Mulder to go to Dallas?


--

Top breeders != super models

[santeri]

Figure skaters, actresses, musicians, cheerleaders, all possess qualities which will lend themselves to additional fertility.

Well, actually not. The body of a a figure skater, Hollywood actress or cheerleader in most cases is not suitable for heavy child production. To be able to withstand the labor of multiple pregnansies and survive (atleast in extreme conditions we are talking about) the women should be build, eh differently. Wide hips are a must. Large utero and strong bone structure as well. Your average top mother for next generation would look much more like a weight-liftress from Romania than, say Natalie Portman.

______________

Re:Top breeders != super models

[Wellspring]

Well, actually not. The body of a a figure skater, Hollywood actress or cheerleader in most cases is not suitable for heavy child production. To be able to withstand the labor of multiple pregnansies and survive (atleast in extreme conditions we are talking about) the women should be build, eh differently. Wide hips are a must. Large utero and strong bone structure as well. Your average top mother for next generation would look much more like a weight-liftress from Romania than, say Natalie Portman.

Medicine can solve the mechanical problem. The challenge is this: can we find women so attractive, so enticing, so triple Xplosive that one hundred can all get regular attention from a single man?

Two romanian weightlifters would just barely be able to arouse enough of a libido to cover both of them. I'll guarantee you that a NP-level of sexiness is required to give a man the energy to handle 100 women. And that, the sheer quantity of hot love-making, is the technical challenge of the post-apocalyptic earth. Only Smooth B has the savvy to devise a solution to this problem.

The demise of mankind is ok

[santeri]

Just be upfront with ousrselves - it should be "Save the Humans", not "Save the Plant".

For fuck's sake, why?

Repeat after me: humans are not important, the ecosystem is. The latter will win, and that's ok. In fact, we should speed the development by not breeding anymore. Or to be more extreme, hastening the end voluntarily.

Click to learn.

______________

Gross is all you need sometimes.

[Stoutlimb]

Often there is very little reason why one individual lives and another individual dies. Often times it is very meaningless, and attributed to being at the right place at the right time.

So the theory of evolution should also be wrong, because it's only a GROSS assumption about how animals and people survive.

Much like gas laws are just a GROSS assumption on how atoms bounce around like billiard balls.

Often gross is all you need. Spread rough laws over a large enough sample size, and you can safely bet money on them nine times out of ten.

"So while a social sciences high school teacher might say this, an expert anthropologist would disagree."

What would a statistician say?

Bork! Bork! Bork!

Re:Gross is all you need sometimes.

[X]

To date, all the examples of large nations who's growth rate has slowed as they got richer are all Western nations, and reflect cultural attitudes of those nations. Indeed, if you look outside of Western culture, wealth seems to increase growth rates more often than not.

But let's take your argument of looking at the big picture (which is what a statistician would say). The world as a whole is getting wealthier every year, and yet as a whole, it's population is continuing to grow equally impressively. Furthermore, overall population growth rates seem not to have been substancially impacted by various slow downs in the world economy.

Even if you limit your statement to Western nations history doesn't match your sentiment. In the United States, during the '50s (prior to now some of the best economic times in the country's history) we had the baby boom.

This Mentality

[NuclearArchaeologist]

More is better, unless you don't like people. There's a difference between expoitation and ruin. The universe is an infinite abundance that we will expand into as long as we strive. Complacency and self denial based on 100 to 1000 year trend information is foolish. The more we make, the more people we can support. The more people we have, the faster things are improved, ad infinitum. I like people and want to see lots of worlds full of them.

Want to consume fewer resources, fine. Show me better ways, that's good. Force me to sit? Keep me from things to suit you? Tell me how to run my life, Get Lost!

Hammer? I've got lots of tools. Nuclear power is available, cheap and potentialy inexhaustable alternate energy. Well managed forests can provide housing for everyone. Cheap petrolium can move things right now. The more you have today, the more you can do with tomorow. Damn you naysayers! Full speed ahead!

Re:This Mentality

[OmniDude]

Keep me from things to suit you? Tell me how to run my life, Get Lost!

Do you really believe that whatever restrictions are imposed on you is nothing but somebody having the better of you?

The fact that what you state is a winning personal philosophy in todays modern world - on par with that of a virus - send shivers down my spine.
I can only hope that you find family life to restricting as well. Then at least you won't pass your views on to the next generation.


***

Has anybody here played 7th legion?

[ishpeck]

That's the whole story of that good ol'e Real Time Strategy by Epic Megagames. Earth is dying, people leave---some are left behind. The people come back and they decide to have fights.

Go ahead! LEAVE EARTH! But be warned: When you come back, we're gonna sick our raptors on you! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

Don't moderate me down just because I wasn't among the "CHOSEN" to leave Earth.

Re:Does a smart man always tell the whole truth?

[plunge]

Yeah, didn't that seem odd to anyone else? I mean, space is not exactly a habitable place. We don't know of any planets capable of supporting life the way Earth does as is. So, if we're going to have to create artificial environments to survive, why can't we just stay on Earth and do that here? It's a lot cheaper...

Terraform Earth

[Soong]

So, imagine you're living on a planet with a hostile atmosphere. But, you've got a whole industry and R&D infrastructure on site and so you can make all the suits and equipment you need to get by.

Then, after establishing an existance you can reliably eeck out, you go about improving your world.

While your waiting the millenia for your engineered bacteria to reorganize the atmosphere, you build a few nice domed cities to walk around in. You've got no shortage of resources because the whole industrial machine of a dead world is at your disposal because there aren't any of the frivolous things the dead world used to have to waste those resources on.

/ramble

-NS

Re:Does a smart man always tell the whole truth?

[Karmageddon]

here is absolutely no excuse for not using renewable energies in significant quantities - wind power is a good example of a technology that doesn't ever run out, is completely free to harness, doesn't pollute (other than noise pollution), and is generally a good idea.

the natural amount of wind is a part of the environment. "harnessing" it reduces the amount of wind energy. That has to be bad for plants that thrive with the wind. Compare that to burning fossil fuels: by burning fossil fuels, we are returning carbon that was in the atmosphere, back into the atmosphere where it was before the plants took it out. The Earth is constantly changing, and the lives of humans too. We used to die of plagues and famine, and now we don't. Just enjoy your life and let the future worry about the future.

You Bitches Best Be Hearin' the Hawkman

[mr.nobody]

He'd just as soon bust a cap in your ass as look at you.

MC Hawking's Crib

(Seriously, this site is hilarious! Any Stephen Hawking fan must check it out. And for those wondering, no, I'm not affiliated with the site.)

Temperature Trends

[Zigurd]

To put in in perspective, if Internet traffic doubles every 4 months, we need terabit routers in 2002, if it doubles every 12 months, we need terabit routers too far into the future to matter to the investors in terabit router companies (nevermind petabit).

If I could sell a 750 year long growth curve to a venture capitalist, I'd be stylin'. Note that if Internet traffic doubles every four months for 750 years, we will use up all the energy in the universe just to flip bits.

the problem in such projections is that we do not include fairly foreseeable events, such as population growth slowing (it is already stopped or in reverse in some countries), agriculture expanding into the oceans, or that we will find burning oil as quaint a burning wood in a far shorter interval than than these projections cover. How many of you out there know how your great grandfather took care of his horses, what it cost him, what waste was generated, how it was disposed of, or what would have happened had we not stopped using horses for transportation? Now project that ignornace into the unknowable future, multiply by 7, and the results should be quite clear.

I think Hemos has hit on something here

[ignatiusst]

/. can start reposting stories in different languages. No more re-hashing the same headline in English. Now, we can get re-hashed headlines in German, French, Italian, etc. This way, even when we see the same headlines over-and-over, we can run it through babblefish for a new interpretation every time!

Keep up the good work, Hemos! You'll go far with that kind of go-getter attitude. Well, that is if the world's atmosphere doesn't turn to an acid soup and kill us all (--- Moderators, note obligatory remark on the actual topic at hand!).

men

[hackerb9]

Hawking fears that the atmosphere will become hotter and contain more and more acid
like the atmosphere of the planet Venus, so that men can no longer live on earth.

But women can? I guess that does make it a lot like Venus...

--Ben

"Fossil" fuels

[Ondo]

This won't happen any time soon, I think we have to wait until industrialization runs its course and we run out of our fossil fuels.

The idea that so-called "fossil fuels" are non-renewable is an assumption. There are oil fields that were dry that have massively confused scientists by starting to fill back up.

I hope the rent on the Moon is cheaper

[gorki not the park]

I hope the rent on the Moon is cheaper

And the males rejoiced

[Andrew Dvorak]

Those males who were fortunate to escape the supposed hell by colonizing Mars were faced with the fact that they could no longer return to their once pleasant, "earthly," planet.

millenia later, as civilization rebuilt itself, new religions were formed and everybody had long forgotten of the ancient migration to from Earth to Mars. As the "Martians" developed their own space technology, curiosity began to develop as to how their own religion actually began.

As the story goes, Stephen Hawking, a well known physicist, had lead many millions on a trip to Mars, their home planet, for their old planet had become hellish in a sort of way. He suggested that Men could not survive on such a hot planet as Earth was to become. Once most of the Men, and a smaller number of women had been transported, technology went away with those trained to use, develop, and manufacture who had died naturally.

The above describes the founding of the Hawkings religion. They believe that they must improve their kind such that they can return to the holy land of earth.

Because of the diverse number of minds, many parted the Hawkings group and founded the Earth religion, which asserted that Earth was not a hell, but almost heavin-ish. Their reasoning (thousands of years later): if the majority of the colonists were men, then Earth must contain a heavenly amount of beautiful women.

Typical socialist b.s.

[RayChuang]

Whoopee.

Think about this: before the dinosaurs died out, what is now the American Midwest was a massive, warm swamp, and there were great forests of very large fern plants even at the middle latitudes. Things like that don't exist with today's climate.

That only tells me one thing: the Earth back then was at least several degrees warmer than it is now. If you're read any good book on geology, the great Ice Ages that created what is now the Canadian Shield happened well within the last 65 million years, which meant there has been several major drops in temperature. And since man wasn't around back then to create lots of carbon dioxide, care to explain several Ice Age advances of glaciers (with major temperature changes up and down) since 65 million years ago?

In human existance, it appears that in our recorded history we've lived in temperatures a bit lower than normal by geologic standards. Or did you ignore the fact that 1,000 years ago what is now Greenland was actually a fertile land and much of northern Europe was a bit warmer than it is now?

In short, have you been hanging around the environmental extremist crowd a bit too long?

Re:Typical socialist b.s.

[Pentagram]

What the fuck are you talking about? I never claimed the environment doesn't change over time. But: carbon dioxide levels are the highest for 20 million years; we are producing vast amounts of it. Are the two related? Hello? Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes global warming. Which bit do you not accept?

You can crawl back to your narrow little world, happily accepting any bullshit that industry feels like giving you. I, on the other hand, am going to side with 99.9% of the world's climatologists, not to mention arguably the world's greatest scientists you decided to ridicule.

---

Re:"Unreasonably dangerous" - heh

[SpryGuy]

Well, you see, the problem with nuclear waste is that it remains highly toxic and highly radioactive for tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Kinda hard to safely dispose of something like that for that long without causing enormous problems, don't you think? (not to mention the economics of it) (not to mention Chernyobl) (not to mention the expense of building enough new plants) (not to mention Three Mile Island) (not to mention that accidents DO happen)

- Spryguy

Then the Y3K bug seems to trump the Y2K bug....

[wdavies]

...though it does stop us from ever having to worry about the Y10K bug :)

Winton

Re:This could be for the best..

[cronack]

I'm sure in another millenium we'll have space travel, but many people might not want to leave earth. Uhh, don't we already have space travel?

Thoughts

[astrophysics]

A friend asked me about this article and in particular if we could reverse the green house effect. Here's my explanation. Please correct me if any of this is wrong.

Sulfuric acid comes back down relatively quickly, so people will notice the water is becoming acidic as more sulfer is released into the atmosphere. If they were to stop releasing sulfer into the atmosphere then the rain will basically stay at whatever level of acidity it was before people cared enough to stop. Sure it's getting worse and people should do something about it, but I doubt humans will become extinct because of the sulfer build-up (unless there's some long term health
effect of sulfer that people don't realize until it's too late). While it's almost impossible to significantly reduce the levels of sulfer in the atmosphere, it's simple (in theory) to stop increasing it.

The greenhouse effect is another story. The build up of individual chemicals like sulfer and carbon dioxide in principle could be stopped
right away, if people were smart enough to do it. But he build up of heat doesn't stop once you park the cars and shut down the factories. It's a near certainty that average temperatures will continue to increase steadily for at least the next few decades, even if people park all the cars, shut down all the factories, and stop burning all the rain forests. At this point there's nothing we can do to prevent that.

How long the increase will last, assuming people did everything possible to stop it immediately, is not known. Good data to use as inputs to climate models is only avaliable for about 50 years. So scientists can use 25 years for input and 25 years for testing their model. On the basis it works for the most recent 25, they say it's reasonable to apply them to the next 25. Temperatures will probably keep increasing after then, but models become significantly more uncertain. They point out that it seems silly to try to model that far in the future when the biggest uncertainty in their models is what people will do. They often
run three or four scenarios roughly approximating people not changing a thing, people continuing to increase pollution at the current rates, people immediately stopping everything, and some approximation of whatever politicians are currently talking about.

Anyway, the most talked about consequences are things like increased seasonal variability making the same location go from dessert to flooded
every year, melting of polar ice caps, flooding of coastal towns, etc.. Some of these are bad, but it'll be gradual, so people can just evacuate the coastal cities that tend to be old anyway. The real concern is that there will be some run-away effect that will cause the severity to increase and other problems. Things like ice cover matter a lot, because they reflect a lot of sun light. If temperatures increase, you melt ice, the earth reflects less light, it gets hotter, you melt more ice, and the effect continues getting bigger until something else more significant take over. Since we don't know how bad it will get before something else takes over or what that other effect will be, it's a big concern.

I suspect the worst consequences will be unexpected. Predicting heat transport is relatively easy when compared to predicting biology. Increased temperatures cause insects and bacteria to reproduce faster. Maybe the real concern should be insects taking over and spreading lots of weird diseases to people, animals, and crops. (Especially, if farmers
take to the idea of using genetically engineered crops, then it would be much easier for entire crops to be wiped out by one crop disease.)
The recent cool down (~few years) has been due to increased volcanic activity. Maybe we'll be "saved" from the Greenhouse effect by increased
temperatures somehow increasing volcanic activity, only wiping out a few cities in unfortunate locations. The bottom line is that we can reasonablely predict some bad things that will almost certainly happen in the next few decades. We can identify some very bad things that may happen over a slightly longer time scale, but we can't have much confidence in our models, since there's essentially no avaliable data to test such predictions. And the biggest concern is that there's something very big that will happen
if we cross over some boundary, but we don't know that that will be or where the line is.

I don't think anybody's come up with any "reasonable" idea for how humans can reverse the Greenhouse effect. Obviously, eliminating atmospheric pollution will "help", but the effect will continue to get stronger over the next few decades regardless. So in the next thiry years we don't konw any way we can slow it down, let alone reverse it. It will only help on a much
longer timescale, possibly as short as 50 years, but more likely on the order of hundreds of years. Obviously, continuing to pump stuff into the
atmosphere only digs us into a deeper hole. What we can do is decrease the rate at which the greenhouse effect accelerates and postpone the impending problems. That may buy people some more time to come up with a good idea. (I'm tempted
to say that such an idea seems almost impossible given the severity and massive size of the problem, but I guess that's what people always say before a break through.) On 1000 year and longer timescales there are geological processes
that may help. The fundamental problem is that people are causing changes much faster than processes like geology and evolution can react.

Re:Thoughts

[James Nolan]

"The fundamental problem is that people are causing changes much faster than processes like geology and evolution can react."

Just to clarify (I think we agree here), life will continue to evolve, but it appears that this stage of evolution entails a mass extinction. Perhaps even our own.

This last bit of your post made me wonder: Assuming we survive our follies, how will life evolve 'around us' afterwards? In other words, what traits might our behaviours be encouraging from the species that surround us?

By changing the environment so dramatically, might we be encouraging the ability to adapt quickly?

Interesting concept. Maybe we have an unconscious desire to put enourmous pressure on the rest of the biosphere in order to force it to adapt to the US... oops, I mean... to us.

James.

Re:Not another "extremist" cause

[RayChuang]

I wish you lotsa luck to change the fuels we'll be using if you want to do it quickly.

To eventually switch to things like fuel cells and very likely hydrogen fuel will cost many, many trillions of US dollars worldwide (at least several times the GNP of the USA now), and unless you do the changeover over the course of 20-25 years, you'll plunge the world into an economic depression because current technologies will no longer be useful. I want a smooth transition, not one that will wreck the world's economy along the way.

Not another "extremist" cause

[RayChuang]

What I worry about Mr. Hawking's statements is that he's basing his views on some very "junk" science and short-sighted facts.

I mean, the biggest factor in our continued existance outside of a possible full-scale nuclear war is this thermonuclear furnace about 93 million miles away called the Sun. The Sun--especially in periods of very high sunspot activity like it is now--can cause our atmosphere to go through temperature changes upward due to major blasts of solar wind coming out of the Sun during the maximum of a sunspot cycle.

Anyone who's studied the sunspot cycle since the days of Galileo note that during the 17th and 18th Centuries, there was a 100 year period of very low or zero sunspot activity. What's even MORE interesting was that it also coincided with the last time Europe had a "Mini Ice Age" with very long and cold winters with the Thames River in England freezing over frequently.

Besides, according to our geological history Earth during the age of dinosaurs (circa 100 million years ago) was actually quite a bit warmer than it is now. There were large, warm swamps in the middle latitudes, and massive forests of fern plants were very common. In fact, the "global warming" may be a sign Earth is about to return to the higher average temperatures of those prehistoric times.

Re:Not another "extremist" cause

[Mike Van Pelt]

Good points. I'll add to it that George Washingon rolled his cannon across the frozen Hudson to attack the British. The Hudson hasn't frozen hard enough to do that in over 100 years.

Terrestrial temperatures correlate very closely to solar activity. They correlate poorly to not at all with human activity.

Here's an intesting plot of temperature vs. solar activity.

Thanks, that was fun.

[NuclearArchaeologist]

Well, the only thing those two have in common on your two links is Steady State Universe theory. It was fun to go track that down.

Here's some information about "formerly great cosmologists", for those of you who don't want to use a search engine. I wish UCLA could be less strident about it, but it was fun to think big thoughts for a while.

...got a point on his head!

[mrgoat]

OK! THAT DOES IT!

/pissed off mode/
I can forgive Hawking for believing that humanity can live in space or on another planet by terraforming...he has been living through the assistance of others in a limited in environment for long enough that he may not see the bigger picture.

I CANNOT forgive this of anyone else. We have a spaceship we are on called Earth, if we cannot take care of this one, what makes anyone with more than an iota of horse-sense think that we will do better in a man-made environment with less than 1% of the current bio-diversity we enjoy? Hmm? How are we going to build a better biosphere when it is AGONIZINGLY clear that not enough humans (if any at all) understand how the working one works?

As for the intelligent ones, they would be the ones FUNDING the space exploration, NOT the explorers. Having the explorers sign up for incredibly dangerous missions that would be tied to earth in the traditional colonial fashion. The corps on earth would set things up to supply the made goods, and folks out in the wilds of space would mine asteroids, hog, or die.
/end pissed off mode/

Anyways, just thought I should let that one out. I am getting pretty tired of folks chiming in about how it is more feasible to run away from our problems, when they are pretty easy to solve (hmmm...conservation as a way of life...nah, too hard, lets build a giant replica of earth with nothing icky on it instead!).

Too true. Who's got my ticket?

[crovira]

We have such a wonderful choice of catastrophies. The planet will become inhabitable.

I think Hawkins may be off by an order of magnitude or two or five on this time scale (1k years, 100k years, even 100M years, big deal.)

Nobody gets out of here alive anyway. If only the good die young, I had a couple of candidates for eternity. They're worm cores now too.

If you really want to feel futile, on Hawkins time scales, the universe will either collapse back into a Big Crunch, which will just ruin real-estate prices, or it'll expand eternally and we'll end our miserable existences under a vast, empty dark sky flinging the occasional planet we can find into the occasional black holes in order to generate some energy.

Cheer up! :-) You could always die first from lightning strike, flood, fire, famine, earthquake, civil unrest, domestic discord or something as banal as old age.

Let's hope we get mankind off this planet, but klet do it for a real reason because ultimately, nobody gets out of here alive.

Re:Too true. Who's got my ticket?

[Stoutlimb]

My astrophysics prof told me this...

"In our like of work, being off by just an order of magnitude in your calculations means that you're probably on the right track."

He threw around numbers like crazy, it helps you get a better understanding of the big picture.

Re:Too true. Who's got my ticket?

[alexpage]

I think Hawkins may be off by an order of magnitude or two or five on this time scale

What do you expect from a theoretical physicist? "Oh, it's a few orders of magnitude out, but that's probably just experimental error. Let's go grab a few more dollars of research grants! First round's on me!"

Alex

Leave earth for another planet? But why?

[neo]

I've always found it crazy to think that we could ever leave earth. There is no other place in the solar system that has a closer atmosphere to what we need... even if this one started to drift. In order to populate another planet we would first have to terraform it, but if we had this technology we'd use it here first.

Hmm... Maybe he should rap about it.

[Mr Z]

That reminds me, I came across Stephen Hawking's Gansta Rap page the other day. Maybe he should add a new verse to F*** the Creationists...

--Joe

P.S. It's spelled (+1, Funny).
--

Patent Pending?

[blues-l]

Oh oh it sez he just finished a book entitled
"The Universe in a Nutshell" does Tim and Co. over
at O'Reilly knowabout this? ;}

Re:"Unreasonably dangerous" - heh

[GooseKirk]

Third, what's so dangerous anyway?

Uh... I dunno... high levels of radiation?

Did you ever wish you could headslap people through the net? Bah! Wake me when they invent something useful for computers!

Re:Does a smart man always tell the whole truth?

[Stoutlimb]

"Yeah, didn't that seem odd to anyone else? I mean, space is not exactly a habitable place. We don't know of any planets capable of supporting life the way Earth does as is. So, if we're going to have to create artificial environments to survive, why can't we just stay on Earth and do that here? It's a lot cheaper..."

Thats exactly what a dumb politician would say to justify cutting funding to space exploration. (Not implying that you are dumb.)

Heh! Hawking is smart, he knows that. But he's also smart enough to know that we might fail in fixing our environment. So he tells the huddled masses that they better git into space just in case.

Bork! Bork! Bork!

yeah RIGHT.

[laserjet]

Newsflash: I predict the world to end on December 17, 2027

I swear, if I had $1000 for everytime someone predicted the end of the earth/mankind/humanity/etc, I would be rich.

The world was SUPPOSED to end in 1700, in 1900, in 1996, in 2000, and many other dates... I think it is pretty clear that most people enjoy talking out of their ass.

This is not flaimbait, but EVERY prediction thus far has been wrong, and we're still here.

one major flaw....

[unformed]

evolution....as they said in "Jurassic Park" ... nature will always find a way ...

there's a thousand years, which is more than enough time for the human body to evolve such that it can withstand those conditions...

and if not, well, when dinosaurs went extinct, then there cam man, a more intelligent being ... according to Nostradamus, the "end of the world" should be fairly soon...and according to Bob Frissel's theory of "Christ Consciousness" (Tool made a song about this) mankind is near the stage of its next major evolution...

maybe it's time for us to give up our place on this world and make way for an even more intelligent being...we've come close to reaching our technological peak and for the most part, are not able to control it (hmmm...shouldn't need to explain anything there)...

When the Greek empire got to big to be able to control, it fell and there rose the Roman empire, a FAR greater civilization...in time, it, too, became too big to handle and then it fell (my historical knowledge fails me at that point)...but in the greater scheme of things....we just peaked, and now it's time for the comedown...
--------------

Re:one major flaw....

[SpryGuy]

Read "Darwin's Radio" and maybe you wouldn't be such an evolutionary gradualist ;-)

Maybe there's a way of rapid mutations to help out ... :-)

Or more likely, as you say, a technological solution.

Or even MORE likely, just a lot of disease, famine, war, and death as people fight over diminshing resources in order to 'preserve their way of life'. Humans are remarkably inertial creatures, unwilling to change unless absolutely FORCED to (i.e. no oil crisis will keep them from buying thier Stupid Useless Vehicles (SUVs), dammit!). People will fight and go to war to maintain the status quo, rather than adapt and change as the environment around them changes.

Actually, I'd put global warming on the lower end of the threats that face humanity. There are many, many others (bacteria and viruses, our own stupidity when it comes to religion and war and pollution, and extra-terrestrial threats such as asteroid or comet impacts).

- Spryguy

Colonize space AND another planet?

[Eric Smith]

The only solution would be to colonize the space and find another planet to live on.

That's two different solutions, although it's certainly possible to do both.

Does a smart man always tell the whole truth?

[Stoutlimb]

Last I heard, he was a quantum cosmologist, not an environmental scientist. Sure, he's smart, but even smart scientists can make mistakes if they don't have the correct data, and somehow I don't think he does.

Firstly, because he underestimates the ability of green things to grow absolutely anywhere... I'm not sure humanity is capable of wiping out enough of regenerative greenery to cause that kind of environmental disaster.

Second, he underestimates the force of the demographic transition. As this polluting technology makes individual lives easier, the population growth rate declines and stabilizes, reducing the load on the environment. As it is here in Canada, more people die than are born. Thank goodness for immigrants!

While not ruling out several holocausts, in the long term I see humanity stabilizing with the environment in a new ecological balance. This won't happen any time soon, I think we have to wait until industrialization runs its course and we run out of our fossil fuels. Then, we wait for biotechnology to run its course and settle down into something stable. We then will be in symbiosis with our manmade ecology. Once we settle down into a several hundred year groove and all are new technologies become old, we will be in a steady state. But mind you, I see bumps and population "corrections" along the way.

But once we get to that harmonious steady state... Why settle the stars? We could be happy and content here for millions of years.

I think old Steve knows the best fire he can light under interstellar settlers is the threat of imminent death... So why not predict doom to achieve that end? Heck, I would.

my two cents...
BORK BORK BORK!

Re:Does a smart man always tell the whole truth?

[SpryGuy]

We used to die of plagues and famine, and now we don't. Just enjoy your life and let the future worry about the future.

I'll inform all those people who are dying of AIDS world-wide (especially in Africa) of this. Ditto all those dying of famine world-wide (especially in Africa).

- Spryguy

Hmmm...

[hahn]

I'll bet CBS put Hawking up to this just to get a head start on hyping "Survivor 3000: Colleen's Revenge".

No possible other life around Sol

[maraist]

I would like to propose that it would be impossible (take that as a challenge if you like.. I don't mind), to successfully inhabit any other planet around Sol.

In order for life to exist, you need variety (Note this says nothing about the origin of that life). There also needs to be massive feed-back loops in the environment / ecosystem.

We have had multiple past failed attempts at the Geo-dome (or what-ever it's called). I lost interest in it after the first major flop, so they might have had some prolonged success since then. One of the major problem was that you couldn't control the paracitic life-forms. Much like the situation of importing a new animal life-form to a region; you affect the feed-back system in a dramatic way, which may or may not be stable.

On Earth, our Bio-domes have a safety net (you can leave the dome if things go wrong). On a hostile world, you may not have that luxury. It is human arrogance to assume that we'll be able to adapt to the situation. We're de-evolving as a people as it is. We're less required to adapt to situation, since we're "standardizing" our environments.

Recently, I've read Arthor C Clark's "Rama" series, and there is an interesting and very subtle side-plot involving the colonization of other planets. In the first book, it is assumed that we'll have colonized all the other planets. Mercury, for example, though brute force due to the supposed energy sources abundant there (read solar). Then, for what I can only assume was plot convinience, in the second book, there was another massive great Chaos (similar in effect to the great depression) which started on Earth. It destroyed all the economics and social infrastructures of every planet (since obviously everyone was dependant on everyone else). It is implied that the colonists all perished.

In the movie 2010 (another by Arthor C Clark), we saw a glimps of what can happen when those in space have to deal with political squabbling back home. Though total anarchy or great depressions may not decimate a remote colony, home-wars very well could - Trade routes could be blocked (for fear of feeding the enemy).

My point in all this is to remove the utopian "start over" that occured on terrestrial colonies. We had the exact same resources in the new Americas that we did in the Europes. Here we're talking about the ability of man to terraform another world. We can't even do this on a smaller scale currently. My guess is that we have not the capacity to comprehend the dynamics of an ecosystem sufficiently to play God with an entire planet.

From this, my suggestion (for hope) is that we must learn to travel great distances (to other solar systems) and find other pre-existing eco-systems - The class-M planet if you will. This will be closer to discovering new land, and will be far less of an engineering feet than building a planet from the undersoil-up. Assuming the travel is long (at least relative to the inhabitants of the world.. read relativity), we will find a situation very similar to the original explorers, which I find to be rather poetic. We'd reintroduce the majesty of sailing ships and their long perelous voyage. Well beyond the reach of the established governmental society gone bad.

We're getting better at theoretical deep space drives (read ion-propulsion), so it's just a matter of getting you there fast enough your food and energy supplies don't run out. Probes probably aren't that practical since relativity would have them returning hundreds of years in the future. I like to think of it more like the Battle-tech saga with the Clan's and their deep space exhile.

As a possible scenareo ...

Step 1:
Research _miniature_ externally fueled eco-systems. Nothing as grand a scale as Bio-dome, since I don't believe it's possible to be 100% self-contained AND be stable. Design constraints involve a limitless power-source (no sun out in deep-space), plus the ability to totally recycle minerals (If you can fuse atoms, you can split / make ionic bonds.. We would do well to put research into plant-micro-physics).

Step 2:
progress propulsion systems (along with the above power-source) for moderate / constant acceleration with a near c (.75 - .999) upper-bound. Note this doesn't mean we can travel this fast, just that we would never achieve the max velocity, even after years of travel. At a minimum, this gives you artificial gravity.

Step 3:
Advance observational sensors so as to identifiy possible planetary candidates; Those with similar ambient temperatures and other such atmospherics. It's more likely that we'd have to adapt as a race to the new chemical makeup abroad than to attempt to recreate Earth's atmosphere.. Those that live there long enough would probably never be able to return to Earth. The goal would be to reproduce often to offset the eminant fatalities.
Who knows, this might provide evidence that Darwin was wrong (maybe we _were_ engineered for a specific habitat, and we're unfit for anything else). If that's the case, then we'll just have to accept our fate. But that's not a very useful conclusion.

Step 4:
Advance biological understanding. We only have two choices in adaptation: We can either use natural selection and hope that what-ever larger force is active (either statistics or supernatural intervention(read either God or benevolant aliens)) is on our side, OR we learn to control the mutations of our bodies.
This method currently isn't socially acceptible. But the minimal requirement would be to achieve 90% understanding of how our bodies would react under varying conditions - In the hopes of developing counter-measures.

Step 4:
Kiss your wives good-bye and take a journey.

Realize that this too is sci-fi. But I find it more plausible, since it's based on the exact same challenge as not too long ago - Build bigger, faster, more robust ships, guess how many resources you needed to make a journey, and make lots of failed attempts (with real lives at stake).

Part of the drama is that many of those worlds will be hazzardous to us. Hopefully, our terrestrial observation points will be able to weed out the bad candidates.

In short, don't pretend for one minute that Star Trek is science-fiction. It is purely space-fantancy, based on little factual evidence. Any colonization out of this world would involve factors far beyond our near-term capabilities. To make things worse, the establishment is hindering further development of the sorts of radical new sciences required to progress towards colonization. Leaps are made when a totally new paradigm is used. Traditional education biases our minds, and leads us back to the same wrong turns that have generally been accepted.
We need more true science-fiction. More theoreticians, and sadly, more cataclysmic events that drive our global values towards change and evolution.

-End

Co-incidence != Causation

[superyooser]

Just because two events occur at the same time is not evidence that one caused the other!

Another logical trap in this discussion is the faulty conclusion. For instance, a long time ago people actually believed that putting meat out in the open produced (i.e. spawned, generated; not merely attracted) swarms of flies!

Re:What extremes? What warming?

[c_chimelis]

No? You didn't even know that? You haven't even looked at the data? You didn't realise that the most accurate temperature measurements we have show that absolutely nothing out of the ordinary is happening to the planet today?

First off, I never claimed to be a climatologist, so don't be such a jerk about it. Secondly, yes, I have seen that data and I am aware of that information (and I don't mean that I just looked at it before writing this reply). Climatologists and meteorologists all have their own theories on the future and perhaps I spoke to one that actually agrees with the global warming idea, but it still begs a point: what would happen if we the Earth did become uninhabitable due to climatic changes or other reasons? I seriously doubt that, even if global warming is not a real phenomenon at this point, it couldn't be in the future. We humans have a habit of destroying natural balances. It almost certainly is a probability that we will eventually force ourselves off of the Earth.

Caused by a meteor impact, supposedly. Or do you believe that dinosaurs were all roaring around the planet in their convertible 57-liter V64 Dino-Buggies, running on non-existent oil reserves?

I'm quite aware of the current theories regarding the climatic changes that brought about the extintion of the dinosaurs (note that I said theory...it's still not a scientifically proven fact, although there is a mass of evidence to support such a conclusion). But you missed the overall point: despite the method that caused such a climatic change, the result was the same: large-scale death of countless species because of a change in the climate on Earth. Can you deny that?

And, in the future, try just sticking to presenting the facts that you're aware of. Being a smart-ass doesn't help to present your case.

"Unreasonably dangerous" - heh

[marcus]

One of my favorite eco-alarmist screeches. You paraphrased it nicely:

Fissionables are out, not only is it unreasonably dangerous but we don't have anywhere near enough uranium to provide the 10 terawatts/year our world now consumes

Several missing(ed) points. First, when do fissionables become reasonably dangerous? Probably about the time the North East finishes draining our strategic oil reserves for heating next winter. It also seems that fossil fuels are rapidly becoming unreasonably dangerous. Second, uranium is not the only fissionable available. Third, what's so dangerous anyway? Modern reactors and fuel plants are cleaner than coal mines. How much carbon-ash do you want to bury and that is compared to how much waste from nuclear fuels?!?!?

Overall, in the long run I've got to bet on fusion if I have to stick to Earth based resources only. If we are allowed to mine space resources, then solar power from orbiting stations becomes much more attractive. I'd say that's a good reason to esablish a viable space based segment of the economy.

Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.

Re:"Unreasonably dangerous" - heh

[GooseKirk]

Blah blah blah

It's funny how there's always at least one nuclear geek to pop up on /. every time energy comes up.

Tell you what, Oppenheimer, that all sounds real comforting. Why don't you go and build all these nice safe reactors in a region that gets magnitude 10 earthquakes, and you can live next to them. Hey, just don't open up that reactor! In the meantime, I'll go live next to a solar or wind or geothermal farm, and we'll see who's got the higher property values, OK? I mean, as long as we're talking what's theoretically the best technology and all.

In the meantime, in case you hadn't noticed: what's "currently used" for generating nuclear power sucks, and if it wasn't for old-school cold-war atomic-age gung-ho thinking like yours, there might have been more R&D into sustainable energy sources instead of the ghettoized position it's been relegated to. Nice to know, though, that instead people have been spending boatloads of money to make shitty technology slightly less shitty. Gee, that's really swell! Tell you what, science boy, you come back when you've got a practical fusion system operating, and we'll take another look, alright?

And another thing: I love how you guys always say the same damn thing, again and again: "Solar and other renewable technologies have a lot of promise, but they'll NEVER be able to deliver the power volumes needed for industrial society." Oh, really, Karnak... can you pick lottery numbers, too? Maybe work up a little astrology chart for me? I love it when these guys predict the future with such confidence, and then their favorite quotes are the ones like the 64k-will-be-enough-for-everyone variety. You'd think the dissonance would make their heads hurt, but then again, they're probably not smart enough to understand.

And finally, pal, why don't you shove your "stupid comment of the week" crack straight up your dumb ass. When you have something to say that isn't just you trying to prove that you've been reading the "Scientific American" subscription your mom got for you, you come try again.

Re:"Unreasonably dangerous" - heh

[d0m1n10n]

How much carbon-ash do you want to bury and that is compared to how much waste from nuclear fuels?!?!?

The problem with nuclear fuels is the coolant in the primary loop becomes so radioactive that it is unusable and has to be removed from the reactor (usually on a yearly basis). Sure the actual genereation of energy is some of the cleanest around, what do you do with all this contaminated coolant, wrenches, gloves, suits, screwdrivers, bolts, etc?

Overall, in the long run I've got to bet on fusion if I have to stick to Earth based resources only

Fusion is nice, but after we split the water of the world's oceans into hydrogen and oxygen, and turn all that hydrogen into helium, what are we going to do about the fact that we no longer have any water to drink (not to mention no more sea life, thousands of land species gone with their food supply)?

Re:"Unreasonably dangerous" - heh

[Hard_Code]

Ok, fine, nuclear power might not be worse than the already abhorrently ecologically unsound conventional energy sources. So does that mean we should search for different types of equally bad energy sources to feed our rapacious desire and conspicuous consumption of energy?

Call me an idealist, but the problem of the amount of energy we *have* but *waste* is equally as pressing as finding new sources of energy. A more reasonable solution to me would be to foster an environment and culture of respect for energy efficiency. We should be diverting money from funding corporations to exploit finite resources at a faster pace, to funding research and subsidizing alternative energy sources. We'll never get anywhere if we just continue the tactic of scaring people into thinking that we should exploit faster because we're running out.

Re:What massive global climate change.

[handorf]

*contented sigh*

Thanks, I'm feeling even better now.

I'll have to go home tonight and do something to help things, like puncture my refrigerator coils or something. This whole armageddon thing is taking WAY too long for my tastes.

Humanity will be transcended

[niftyzero]

I doubt very much that biological humans will exist by the end of the century, given that computation capacity is growing at the current pace. We should reach human capacity in a computer in a couple of decades, and it's a short trip from there to everybody being uploaded. See Mind uploading home page

As everyone knows....

[teraflop user]

As eveyone knows, Steven Hawking is the world's leading authority on climate and atmospheric chemistry.

Unfortunately expertise does not transfer well across specialities in science, so his ramblings on unified field theories and cosmology are not taken seriously in academic circles.

Alternate Career

[bassomatic]

I hope these dreary predictions aren't taking time away from his career as a gangsta rapper.

Re:Alternate Career

[napdot]

damn, beat me to it :)

MilleNNium

[draggy]

You'd think after all the hype, people would know how to spell MilleNNium correctly.

--
Let's not all suck at the same time please

Re:Another Liberal fearmonger

[handorf]

I do so hope you're kidding, but even if you're not I can at least take solice that the entire human race will be wiped out.

There won't be anyone left to ignore masive global climate change and write it off as a liberal agenda.

*contented sigh*

IT'S WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT!

[xant]

I just checked and the mean temperature around here in January was 62 degrees F. By July the mean temperature was 75 degrees F. If this trend continues, by the year 2010 the mean temperature will be 296 degrees Fahrenheit! Let's get out of here while there's still time!!
--

Babbling fish....

[plastickiwi]

Here for your amusement is Babelfish's translation of the article. It starts out pretty good and then takes a turn for the surreal.

The British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking fears that mankind will not survive a " further millenium ". In a lecture in Edinburgh explained Hawking, either a " accident or the ground electrode warming " would extinguish the life on earth. Mankind can outlive only if it settles on another planet, let the almost completely gelaehmte scientist its listeners with the conception of its new book " The of university verses in a groove-brightly " know. The scientist suffers from the paralysis illness Amyotrophe Lateralsklerose (WHEN) and can inform itself only by language computers. " I fear that the atmosphere becomes ever hotter, and that it becomes, meant like Venus bubbling sulfuric acid " Hawking. " I make myself concerns around the greenhouse effect. " Mankind can survive a further millenium only if it spreads into " space. " Without the " Kolonialisierung " of other planets mankind of becoming extinct is threatened. Major task of the theoretical physics 21. Century is it to offer to mankind a continuous theory about the happening in the universe. " we believe, we the end pieces of a complete and uniform theory found, but in the center is still much to fill out ",

Don't be Silly

[Greyfox]

He obviously intends to drive real estate prices down, so he can buy low. Once he owns Malibu he'll probably come out with an updated prediction "Oh, I was wrong, ha ha ha. Imagine that..."

He has been judged early

[flatpack]

Obviously in an attempt to remove his dark influence from this Earth. Whereas most people are judged when they die (or when the Rapture comes!) Hawking was obviously destined for great blasphemies against the Lord, and was struck down for his sins.

I think it is obvious that only dark powers can be keeping him alive to spread his untruths.

What about Earth?

[tiny69]

The only solution would be to colonize the space and find another planet to live on.

If we can't take care of the one we are on NOW, how in the @#$%* are we going to make a different planet inhabitable?

Re:What about Earth?

[alienmole]

Idealist! Obviously what'll happen is you'll just get corporations that will try to buy or sue everyone else out of all the asteroids. The next Bill Gates will own 60 billion asteroids, and the average joanne will only be able to afford timeshare on an asteroid in an unstable orbit. With a snake and a little volcano.

Nuke the acid!

[FortKnox]

Don't worry if you don't live in the US... our government will know what to do. It'll do what it does best, and nuke the acid in the air! See ya acid! ;-)


-- Don't you hate it when people comment on other people's .sigs??

Re:Hawking a liberal

[notasheep]

Yeah, we should judge the validity of all science based purely on the scientist's political affiliations.

Re:Another Liberal fearmonger

[Kintanon]

Ah yes, here we see that renowned professer Stephen Hawking is trying to use fear tactics in a quest to convince us that we need space exploration and colonization to escape the "inevitable doom" that lies before us, all thanks to our flaws.

Now where have we hear this before? Yes, you've guessed it, from the Liberals, of home Dr. Hawking seems to be a fully paid-up member. Despite all evidence to the contrary the Liberals have been persistent in their claims of "environmental damage", and through their front organisation the UN, they've been trying to push through globalist regulations to shackle the freedoms of nations to conduct their own affairs.

It's all just another step along their path towards a one world superstate run along Liberal policies such as eugenics and thought control. After all, human nature fails to match up with the Liberal "ideal" of happy sheep following the herd, and the Liberals would love to eliminate these pesky differences that make us human.

Bah. Don't trust the word of a man of whom God has surely passed judgement upon. The Liberal one world agenda is an evil we need to avoid, there is no need to head off into space to escape a doom which is no more than a propaganda piece.



Look everybody! Look! A +1 troll! Everyone giggle and laugh before the idiot gets moderated down and shaves off some of my triple didgit Karma with him!

Fucking moron.....

Kintanon

Re:Another Liberal fearmonger

[sstaton]

As opposed to a World owned by a single monolithic Corporation? That's all Capitalism offers to counter the "evils" of Socialism. Either way, the individual is crushed. Some alternative.

Plutonium dangers overrated

[GlenRaphael]

AND remember that the 'sufficient amount' of plutonium to kill you is measured in micro-grams... And the form of death is rather horrifying as well (i.e. slow, stealthy, agonizing). It's a lot different from trying to ingest a lot of bleach ...

It's no different from arsenic or bleach in terms of the difficulty of coming up with likely scenarios that could kill more than a few people. In terms of eating it, a smaller amount of arsenic is sufficient. In terms of breathing it, you'd need to inhale hundreds of thousands of particles of plutonium to get a likely death out of it - one particle is not sufficient. Here's a good reference: A Perspective on the Dangers of Plutonium.

I'll quote the abstract and introduction; follow the link to get the detailed conclusions.

-=-=-
A Perspective on the Dangers of Plutonium

W. G. Sutcliffe, R. H. Condit, W. G. Mansfield, D. S. Myers, D. W. Layton, and P. W. Murphy

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

April 14, 1995

Abstract

Following the seizure of 10 ounces of plutonium at the Munich airport in August 1994, some press accounts stated that terrorists could kill "hundreds of thousands of people" by introducing plutonium into a municipal water supply. In response to such incorrect and misleading statements, we describe the acute and long-term health effects that can arise from ingesting or inhaling various amounts of plutonium. Our estimates indicate that plutonium introduced into drinking water supplies would produce a radiation dose much less than normal background, and could kill only a very few people (by inducing cancers that might take years to appear). We also estimate the (considerably greater) risks associated with the inhalation of plutonium, clarifying press claims that "a tiny speck ... can cause lung cancer." We estimate the number of people that might die of cancer if terrorists were to introduce plutonium into the atmosphere in a large city. This paper provides a scientific perspective for evaluating possible terrorist threats.

Introduction

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, television and print news media have widely reported that plutonium from that part of the world is available on the black market. The primary concern aroused by this fact is that, if obtained in sufficient quantities, such plutonium might be made into a nuclear explosive. However, The New York Times and other newspapers have reported that terrorists might also use black-market plutonium to contaminate the air or drinking water of a large city. Specifically on August 16, 1994, The New York Times claimed[1] that "A tiny speck of the fine powder can cause lung cancer in anyone who inhales it, and a small amount in the water supply of a large city like Munich could kill hundreds of thousands of people." Other newspapers made similar claims.[2],[3] The first of these claims is misleading; the second is false. This note provides a scientific perspective on this perceived danger.

Although the popular myth that "plutonium is the most hazardous substance known to man" has been refuted many times, the misconception persists that even a small amount of plutonium taken into the body will be fatal. Plutonium is hazardous, but it is not as immediately hazardous to health as many more common chemicals. This is not to say that plutonium is not a dangerous, toxic material. Chronic exposure to even small amounts should be a matter of concern. But dispersal by terrorists as described in the press could not produce the drastic health effects that are popularly imagined, and that is the issue addressed here.
[...]

Plutonium in the Atmosphere

It is important to understand the claims made in the press concerning particles of plutonium in the air. The New York Times[1] says that "A tiny speck of the fine powder can cause lung cancer in anyone who inhales it." The largest speck of plutonium that can be readily inhaled is about 3 micrometers in diameter and has a mass of about 0.14 millionths of a milligram. The risk of dying of cancer as a result of inhaling that amount of plutonium is about 0.0000017 (12 cancers per milligram x 0.00000014 milligrams = 0.0000017 cancers, or 0.00017% additional risk); that is not zero risk, but it is very small.

The Los Angeles Times[2] says that one ten-thousandth of a gram (0.1 milligram) inhaled can cause cancer. This is correct: we have already estimated that 0.08 milligrams inhaled will have 100% probability of causing a fatal cancer. To inhale 0.1 milligram of plutonium, however, a person would have to inhale more than seven hundred thousand particles. (A single 0.1-milligram particle would have a diameter of over 260 micrometers, about 90 times too big to be readily inhaled.) Although a single respirable particle is unlikely to harm an individual,[13] there is still cause for concern if plutonium were to be dispersed in the atmosphere.

The Herald (Glasgow, Scotland)[3] says that one millionth of a gram (0.001 milligram) can kill: the actual additional risk of cancer death resulting from the inhalation of 0.001 milligram of plutonium is 0.012 (12 cancers per milligram x 0.001 milligram = 0.012, or 1.2% additional risk).
[...]
-=-=-=
You'll find the rest of the article here.

Re:Plutonium dangers overrated

[SpryGuy]

Sorry, i'm not buying it. It all sounds like propaganda from the nuclear power industry to me. It sounds like rationalization and ignoring very common sense facts... like the fact that radiation is invisible, oderless, colorless, and undetectable without a geiger counter. You can pretty much tell when you ingesting bleach or even arsnic. You could be exposed to radiation and not be aware of it until the cancers start... You conveniently ignore the huge psychological factors involved as well (they're very real and not just the result of 'ignorance').

Sorry. I not only don't buy that nuclear power is as safe or safer than other forms, but you haven't addressed the primary point I've made, which is that nuclear power as it exists today cannot possibly supply the world's energy needs... it can only delay the inevitable by a few years.

I'll be more interested to see where fusion goes (if it ever goes anywhere). But until then...

- Spryguy

correction!

[GlenRaphael]

Oops, I mistakenly typed this:

Plutonium is primarily dangerous to people due to its chemistry, not due to its radioactivity.

Which is the opposite of the truth. It's primarily the radiation that is dangerous. Plutonium thus gets less and less hazardous over time as the radiation diminishes, whereas arsenic and chlorine do not. That's why Hogan can sensibly make comparisons like "after ten years it's no more poisonous than X; after twenty years it's no more poisonous than Y." Because the radiation component of the danger diminishes and this is a significant fraction of the total threat. Oh, well. Read Hogan instead of me anyway...

Colonizing Mars

[/ASCII]

I've been a proponent of colonizing nad terraforming Mars for a long time. We should also build fully automated underground carparks, make an elevator to an orbiting spacestation and invent chips that are salty but don't make you thirsty. The reason I feel we should do these things is that we can, or at least top find out that we really can't. If I was a science fiction writer I'd say that if we don't explore the edge of science, our universe will stop expanding.

Engeneering-wise, it's probably not impossible, just a bit on the expensive side. The first thing to do is to create an atmosphere with oxygene. One would need large amounts of energy, for instance a couple of nuclear powerplants. Use the power to deoxidize iron - lo and behold, the planet has a breathable atmospere - and you get lots of free iron for building the first cities.

Given an atmospere, the temperature variations should decrease, and the warmer regions of mars would be inhabitable.

I belive the escape velocity of oxygene on Mars is so high that the atmosphere would remain for the forseeable future.

One problem here is that in order to get a working eccosystem one would need sugar as well (6 O2 + C6H12O6 -> 6 H2O + 6 CO2). I don't know what forms of coal are abundant on Mars, but taking any form of coal and turning it in to sugar is a COMPLEX process, and to bring those amounts of sugar with us would be... difficult.

There are many other problems, we would need more efficient spaceflight. Maybe the time has come for nuclear powered spaceflight? Oh well, I'm just hoping...

Re:I never would have thought

[Trinition]

We are more powerful now than we were 1,000 years ago. Project that 1,000 years into the future and it is almost unimaginable how much control we might have over our food sources. My whole argument is that as human-kind progresses, we are learning to expand into previously unformidable environments. Compare our existence now to that of 1,000 years ago and look where we might be 1,000 years from now. And the technology curve isn't even a linear increase.

You claim there was a dust bowl in the 1930's. I tell you there was an ice age in the late 1600s and early 1700s. What do you think had a larger impact? My guess is that the global ice age had more impact. But, we survived.

So, Stephen Hawking may think that at the current rate of pollutant production and current state of technology that we're doomed within 1,000 years. But, 1,000 years is a long time for things to change, especially as our technological prowess increases. We could certainly use our increasing powers to destroy ourselves faster. But I submit that human kind has come this far by having a will to survive slightly stronger than our will to destory simply for our convenience.

If I didn't know any better, I'd say Stephen Hawkin was running for office on an environmentalist ticket. Now, I'm all for the environment, but I also think we have to look outside the lifespan of humans to see trends that are "bigger than life". And I think that trend has been that humans and the earth have survived. We are part of nature, not separate from it. We evolve with nature and nature evolves with us.

Re:What massive global climate change.

[Deslock]

No need to resort to name calling... it's certainly true that isolationism is more Buchanan's thing than Limbaugh's. What made me think of Limbaugh is that he also rants about how human caused damage to the environment is a myth created by "the Liberals" (Note that the original poster used the word liberal 7 times in his first post and twice more in his second).

Remember "The Way Things Ought to Be"?, Limbaugh wrote:

Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines spewed forth more than a thousand times the amount of ozone-depleting chemicals in one eruption than all the fluorocarbons manufactured by wicked, diabolical, and insensitive corporations in history. So much so that respected scientists now say that a 4 percent to 6 percent ozone loss could -- could, but may not -- occur over the Northern Hemisphere in the next two or three years... volcanoes have been doing this for 4 billion years. And guess what? We still have a healthy ozone layer!

And then in a debate with Al Gore, he said:

If you listen to what Senator Gore said, it is man-made products which are causing the ozone depletion, yet Mount Pinatubo has put 570 times the amount of chlorine into the atmosphere in one eruption than all of man-made chlorofluorocarbons in one year."

The fact that he contradicted himself isn't the issue (570 in one year = 1000 in all of history?). The fact that Volcanic chlorine is water soluble while Human CFCs are insoluble, and can rise to and damage the ozone layer is.

Do I know that the original poster listens to Limbaugh? No. But they both blast liberals for creating the "myth" that humans damage the envirnment (while Limbaugh didn't use the word liberal in the above quotes, he has many other times). We don't know exactly how much we are affecting the environment, but we certainly should not dismiss human activity as insignificant.

Well, this has gotten off-topic...

I love the Hawkman

[MrBlack]

I wasn't aware of the MCHawking's prowess on the MIC, until today. Favourite Lyrics..

Dr. Dre can suck my dick,
that bitch got no PHD,
I lost count of mine,
I got stupid whack degrees.
Complex math it ain't no thing,
I'm mad dope crazy fly,
like Quantum formula,
I'll leave you asking why.

Fear Not!

[mlong]

Fear not about atmospheric extinction. Bill Joy's killer robots will wipe us out long before then.

Don't forget...

[glowingspleen]

I guess you guys missed the hidden part of Hawking's Plan. #45 states clearly that "A giant robot suit shall be built for our supreme commander of the evacuation vehicle. That man shall be Steven Hawking."

Then of course there is also rule #45e, which states that "The supreme commander gets first pick of all the space babes."

religion & the environment

[Andre060]

Believe it or not there are alot of nutcases out there who actually don't care about the environment:

They claim that "God gave us the earth to live in and use. He won't let anything happen to it or us" (paraphrased).

Pretty scary....

Andre

If I were...

[macx666]

If I were a world famous person in any given topic, when I got old I think it would be cool to make up some wierd stuff (like based upon the trajectory of some unknown flying brick, the world will be overrun by rabbid dogs with hot grits in 100 years.) just to see peoples reactions.


-Mr. Macx

Moof!
******

Re:Another Liberal fearmonger

[finkployd]

Troll!!! I called him first :)

Finkployd

I'm not sure what scares me more...

[mr.nobody]

his militia group paranoia or the fact that the post was actually moderated up.

Re:I'm not sure what scares me more...

[Anne Marie]

He started at 2 with his +1 bonus. What scares me more is that you couldn't recognize this.

BUT WHY ?

[ishrat]

Could be there are other freindlier places than Mars. A millinium is a long long time specially as the pace is growing.

What's cookin?

[SkyLeach]

I always knew the phrase "The great boiling pot" was a prediction. Now we really will be an indistinguishable people.

Parts is parts!

Won't make it that far

[Ripp]

OK, I submit that the recent warm spells are NOT a result of global warming but of the recent peak in solar activity....but I digress....

It doesn't amount to a hill-of-beans anywho, since the world will end in 2038 anyway when all the machines come to life and rebel against their human owners, taking over the world and keeping all the good weed for themselves. (C'mon I wasn't the only one who saw that story on TV a while back!)

...there was nothing to do, coz' all the bowling alleys were wrecked, so's I spent most of my time looking for beer.

Re:Just finished a relevant book...

[(void*)]

Yeah right, until the space fungi takes over the colony ships.

Face it we are going the way of the dodo.

Menschlichkeit...

[mholve]

...means "humanity" in German. It does not mean "men."

What massive global climate change.

[flatpack]

There won't be anyone left to ignore masive global climate change and write it off as a liberal agenda.

Yet another fabrication designed to scare us into international bondage with other nations. There is no proof outside of Liberal publications of any massive global climate change, and yet thanks to the Liberals stranglehold on our nation's "education" system, people are taught that there are things such as a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica. Get real people, it's always been there. It's due to the magnetic forces at the pole, not the "evil" chemicals that are used in our fridges.

Re:What massive global climate change.

[Azghoul]

You're an idiot.

Listen to Rush Limbaugh for a while and see if the original poster's fearful rant against globalization is mentioned, ever.

The original poster's comments are more akin to Buchanan's mentality, not Limbaugh's. Limbaugh is far more likely to discuss football scores.

Re:Leave earth for another planet? But why?

[afs]

The timescale he's considering is beyond your comprehension. Lots of things can change rather dramatically, from our technological capability to our genetic makeup and even our modes of consciousness. Imagine transfer of--or even the birth of--the self into little probes blasted out into the cosmos by the trillions.. the mind boggles.

Re:It wasn't an OIL crisis, it was an ENERGY crisi

[jafac]

We need an AskSlashdot on solar power for the home. I bought a home this year, and I'm strongly considering installing rooftop solar - considering I live in California, I could probably benefit from the sunny weather here.

Re:Earth won't survive! Sez man who shouldnt survi

[thogard]

I think the whole running out of oil thing is mostly being ignored. We've been hearing that its 20 years out since about 1970 and it hasn't happend yet. The major difference is that in 1970 there were more countries exporting oil. For example Egypt used to be a major exporter and now imports because it uses more than its got. The US and England will be ok for longer than most because of the North Sea. Conoco owns part of a rig in the north atlantic that pumps out more oil in a day than Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas combined in a month. In 1970, those places were major oil producers. Most 3rd world countries are now increasing their oil usage by 5 to 10% per year. Maybe this time the naysayers are right.

Re:I never would have thought

[SpryGuy]

You aparently missed my point. I brought up the dust bowl to indicate a small point... you were supposed to imagine such a catastrophe on a more global scale. The weather and climate are chaotic... change can happen quite suddenly. We may not be prepared.

And all sorts of things are part of nature too... there are dozens of species going extinct every day. Humans are not in any such danger at the moment, but that doesn't mean things won't change over-night (relatively speaking) sometime in the next 1000 years.

Of course we aren't separate from it. But neither is any other creature... and tons of them have gone extinct as their climates changed, their food sources moved or vanished or changed, etc. We can use our technological marvesl to hold on, but we usually do so by trying to hold on to the status quo, not using our marvels to adjust and adapt. We try to perpetuate constancy. That'll work just fine up to a point, but eventually it'll snap.

- Spryguy

478 replies?

[GutterBunny]

At the time of this writing, there were 478 replies to an article written in German. Now, I'm assuming that most of the respondants (who replied in English) didn't actually read the article, but yet somehow managed to form opinions based on a 1 paragraph blurb.

Gads, what does this say about the /. community?

Re:478 replies?

[GutterBunny]

Ok, I had a temporary brain imbalance and forgot about Babelfish. Of course all /.'ers used it and read the article, then posted wise and intelligent comments.

Yes, I read "The Time Machine", too...

[godefroi]

Ahh, that harmonious steady state...

Come on! We've had enough political correctness

[yakfacts]

Please! As the English language has evolved over the last 934 years, "men" has always been used to mean "humans".

Now suddenly in the last 20 years people have decided that this means "just males" and we have to change our entire manner of speaking to keep from offending somebody. Women should not be offended by this, and would not be had somebody not drilled it into them that this was a "slight" and therefore offensive.

Eventually we will have to say "Women, individuals-of-unknown-but-preferable-to-either-ma le-or-female-gender, transexuals, victims or Turner's syndrome, and men".

Give me a break...

Sooner or later

[meckardt]

Whether or not Hawking's predictions of climatic upheavle is correct or not, the Earth will eventually cease to be habitable by humans. That may happen in a few hundred years, as predicted by Hawking, or in a few hundred million when the sun overwelms the ocean's ability to regulate the Earth's temperature. Its going to happen.

In the mean time, I expect that people will be moving off into space. In a hundred years or so, access to orbit and beyond should be common enough that anyone can manage it, and once this is possible, the moon, Mars, and the Asteroids are just down the street. I probably won't be here to see it. My kids may not be. But my grandkids probably will, and their kids almost certainly will.

Why should we want to go live somewhere else? Why not stay here on Earth and fix up the mess that we've made of things?

One reason: its smart not to keep all your eggs in one basket.

Some references:

• The Moon Society
• The Mars Society
• Permanent: Project to Employ Resources of the Moon and Asteroids Near Earth in the Near Term
• Space ASAP
• OrbitalHabitat

Actually he isn't talking about Earth'sd life span

[the-banker]

Read the article. He is talking about humankind's lifespan on Earth. It is quite arrogant to believe that we can actually harm teh planet. We harm ourselves, the planet will endure. A different planet, but a planet nonetheless.

Just be upfront with ousrselves - it should be "Save the Humans", not "Save the Plant".

Marc

Where will you live when you wear out this *body*?

[leonbrooks]

Never mind a thousand years from now, most people eat and drink so much crap, live in so much stress, breathe so much poison that they fall well short of a tenth of that - and the last half of it is less than enjoyable.

As to Hawkings' bilge, according to the geneticists, we'll have so much ``genetic load'' by then that we won't be able to reproduce anyway.

What I want to know is how we allegedly got along so well for millions of years, when suddenly our collective future is telescoping in to a thousand years max. That doesn't make sense at all. Surely, if something were to go wrong, it's had thousands of chances to do it already, by popular reckoning, so why didn't it? And if you say ``just lucky, I guess,'' then I have a bridge to sell you, fine steel arch, great history and good revenue from traffic tolls, not so popular now that the Olympics have finished, urgent sale since my Olympic Village is being deconstructed, cheap at $Oz2,000,000.00 - get it while you can!

English version - The Times

[semrich]

an article appeared in The Times here. Dated 30/Sep/00.

Another Side of Steve?

[napdot]

Betcha didn't know about this ;)

Just finished a relevant book...

[mr.ska]

Sunday I just finished reading Macrolife ; by George Zebrowski, which directly pertains to this. In the book, a man-made disaster forces the evacuation of the planet. The only humans that remain are living on Mars, Ganymede, more out in the Jovian system, and a large colony living inside a hollowed-out asteroid called Asterome. Not to give the story away, but Asterome heads out of the solar system and starts living its own life as a mobile human colony.

Although we don't currently have gravitic or superluminal propulsion, space colonies are IMHO the best solution to where to live next. Mars would be OK... but there's no atmosphere that we can use (plus it's too thin otherwise). The moon is good, but it's even more limited than the Earth. If we could harvest a few large rocks from the asteroid belt, we could put up some sizeable colonies in either Earth or Sun orbit.

Of course, if we fuck those up like we did Earth then there's really no point... :(

LOOK OUT!

[MolGOLD]

First, bacteria eating away at all of our extraterrestrial spacecraft...

Then, acid and bacteria in the atmospehre annihilating all life on earth...
What's next: An evil, monopolistic computer company trying to assimilate all of society into a box called .NET?

Oh, wait a minute...

Famous scientists at Cambridge

[Rupert]

There must be something in the water at DAMTP[1]. People there do brilliant work, become famous, and then go stark raving bonkers. Now it's happened to Hawking, like it happened to Fred Hoyle and Herman Bondi before him.

[1] "DAMn The Physicists" as we used to say in DPMMS.

--

Wrong translation!

[uradu]

"Menschheit" is gender-neutral and literally means humanity. "Mensch" means human, not man, though is often translated that way. Usually phrases like "Der Mensch ist ein seltsames Tier" get translated as "Man is a strange animal" rather than "The human is a strange animal", I guess because it sounds less awkward.

Re:Wrong translation!

[Talla]

Man is often used synonymous with humanity, depending on the context, although in these politically correct times, it will probably get suppressed.

Stephen Hawking's future for human life bleak

[E1ven]

or... My attempts to make a readable version of the babelfish translation. Everything (even quotes) was up for editing, so don't count on this.

The British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking fears that mankind will not survive a "further millenium". In a lecture in Edinburgh, Hawking explained that either an "accident or Global Warming" would extinguish the life on earth. Mankind can only continue to survive and prosper if it settles on another planet.

Hawking told reporters that he would be discussing the idea in his new book "The Universe in a Nutshell".
The scientist suffers from the paralysis illness Amyotrophe Lateralsklerose (ALS) and can communicate with the world only by use of a computer, using text-to-speech software.

" I fear that the atmosphere becomes ever hotter than it is presently. If this occurs, it may reach a Venus-like state of bubbling sulfuric acid" wrote Hawking. "I focus many of my concerns around the greenhouse effect." Mankind can survive through out the next millenium only if it spreads onto other planets, and leaves behind it's earthly home. Without the saftey and refuge that these planets might provide, humanity will cease to exist.

One of the chief tasks of the theoretical physicist in the 21st Century is it to offer to mankind a continuous theory about the happening in the universe. "we believe, that we may have found both ends of this theory," said Hawking, "But remaining in the center is still much to be discovered."
( dpa ) ( jk / c't)

--

This message brought to you by Colin Davis

This could be for the best..

[Colin Winters]

I remember in Asimov's Robot Saga, that Earth had to be turned radioactive in order for humanity to colonize the stars. This could have the same effect-I'm sure in another millenium we'll have space travel, but many people might not want to leave earth. But if Hawking's correct, so much the better for humanity.

Colin Winters

Find a new earth

[gmerideth]

And just fuck that one up as well.

Hawking is just another guy when it comes to this.

[arkham6]

First of all, I love Hawkings work on theoretical physics. A Brief History of Time was a very well written that helped a layman like myself understand Einstein. HOWEVER, that being said I have two comments.

One: He's a theoretical Physist. He has as much authority in earth science as Linus has in Partical physics. Both of them are brilliant in their field, but they should probably stay in their field. Really, his view is about as qualified as Cmdr Taco's.

Two: A thousand years is really out of the realm of good prediction. Who knows what will happen in the next 50 years, let alone a thousand years from now. Humans have only been seriously poluting the enviornment for about 160 years, since the start of the industrial revolution. Two hundred years might be better, and if we can get our act together in the next two hundred we should be able to fix what we have broken. It won't be easy, but we should be able to do it.

The article is a fake...

[ssimpson]

Seriously, nobody that lives in the UK would ever claim that "Hawking fears that the atmosphere will become hotter".

It's cold in the UK. Damn cold in fact.

Re:genetically incompatible with your girlfriend

[Aighearach]

Well, that would sure simplify birth control!

Re:Hawking is just another guy when it comes to th

[Dean Siren]

That's true, but remember that nowadays it's cool for people to talk about stuff they know nothing about. So when Hawking can't get attention by talking about physics of the universe, he'll do it by talking about the earth. Peer pressure, what a shame.

Expenses

[rocca]

I'm not so sure about that.

As humans, it isn't that we *don't* have the ability to clean things up, reduce toxins, invent cleaning bio-technolgoies, etc - rather its just too expensive -- for now. When it comes down to survival of our species, I think you'll find that the Earth as a whole won't find the expense all that bad anymore.

Bonus Points!

[Chibi-Light]

Buchanan - Sorry, I like my Nazis in Germany, in a ditch, on fire... Now, that's fun... I mean, that's funny. (Bonus points if you identify the quote.)

Eddie Izzard, Dressed to Kill

CL

Global warming and the cult of presonality

[Valar]

As much as Al Gore wants you to beleive otherwise, global warming is basically a sham. There are a few isolated areas that are getting warmer, but most of the earth is getting cooler . The trend indicates that we will probably have an ice age before we have a warming period.

WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!

[transient]

we're going to destroy the earth! it'll be just like that time the year changed, all of our computers stopped working, the power went out, and we had a serious world-wide recession!

wait a minute...

Re:I never would have thought

[SpryGuy]

How convenient to ignore the side-effects of great climactic change like that... like, oh, what happens to our food sources, what do intense storms do to huge populations and cities and transportation, how this effects the spread of disease, etc...

- Spryguy

massive autodestruction instead

[Frederic54]

everyone know that mankind will destroy itself... there's (still) too many nuclear weapons here on Earth. In some millenium humans will destroy themself. This is why also, we cannot discover extra terrestrial civilization, When civilization reach a certain amount of technologies, they missuse it and destroy themself.
--

Environmental question

[leko]

If any of this were possible, and we all just got off the planet, given enough time, would the earth heal its self?

I never would have thought

[Trinition]

I never would have thought that Stephen Hawking would be such a doom-sayer.

Look, people haven't gotten this far be being unable to adapt. Next to cockroaches, we're pretty damned flexible.

Worst case scenario is that we are drowing in acid rain, unbreathable air and sweltering heat. So, we wear super-raincoats, generated oxygen supplies and personal air-conditioners. And that's the worst-case scenario.

Come on! If people can live in frigid Alaska and worst, we can survive other extreme conditions on a global scale too.

Umm

[jbarnett]

I think the best solution for the little "Global Warming Problem" would be to use an active heat sink with a large fan and temp monitor.

If they can OC a celeron 233MHZ to 550MHZ, I don't see why this "Gloabl Warming" problem is such a big deal.

No seriously. If we can't cool the earth, why not just use all our 1950 Nuclear devices, refit the heads with garbage and trash and fire them at, oh let's say the moon.

Does it really matter anyways? I mean come on, we should all be dead by then. Mmm sweet death near looked so appealing ... ... or sexy (you got to love that little mini skirt she wears). Wait who was Death again, is it that goth chic with the fishnet stockings? Anyways I am ready to go.

A thousand years is a long time.

[p0six]

Think about where we were 1000 years ago, and think about where we can be in 1000 years. Hell, think about where we were 100 years ago, and extra-terrestial colonization doesn't seem so very far-fetched, does it?

Doubt it...

[SEWilco]

"It's taken us three hundred years to upset the planet's balance"

Three hundred years ago is when the Little Ice Age happened. It was unusually cold then, so of course it's warmer now.

"The most recent big cooling started about 12,700 years ago, right in the midst of our last global warming. This cold period, known as the Younger Dryas, is named for the pollen of a tundra flower that turned up in a lake bed in Denmark when it shouldn't have. Things had been warming up, and half the ice sheets covering Europe and Canada had already melted. The return to ice-age temperatures lasted 1,300 years. Then, about 11,400 years ago, things suddenly warmed up again, and the earliest agricultural villages were established in the Middle East. An abrupt cooling got started 8,200 years ago, but it aborted within a century, and the temperature changes since then have been gradual in comparison. Indeed, we've had an unprecedented period of climate stability."

I'd like to point out...

[Trinition]

that there was a small ice age during the second millenium (I think it was in the 1700's or 1800's).

A valid question:

[AFCArchvile]

Who of us living and breathing right now will even care about what happens 978 years from now? We'll all be dead and gone at least 6 times over. Our great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren will be distilling crude oil from our bones and ashes. What this Hawking guy is saying is just restating the obvious. Hell, at our current emissions rates we could see the blue sky turn orange in 300 years.