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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."
>"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?
...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
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 ...
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
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.
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?
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?
> If more americans had been to school...
If more of them had been to school, indeed, they might actually capitalize "Americans".
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!
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
"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?
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
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!)
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
It's where I keep all my stuff :(
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.......
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
Free as in "the Truth shall set you..."
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.
sigs are a waste of space
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
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
That's a great sig. Maybe I'll use it?
What about Brian Boitano?
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?
That said, there's significant evidence of large scale global change, not about to happen but happening right now. For example:
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:
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.
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.
Those of us who left would probably be the intelligent ones..
I guess it won't be the modest ones!
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?
___________________________
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
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...
Well, as global warming continues, you'll be able to tread water over it.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
MC Hawking
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.
I do not have a signature
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.
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...
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.
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.
Oops. Missed another one. More reading here.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
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.
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...
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear"
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.
I wrote parts of this stuff
bring on the four-tittied bitches!
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
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
. . . I guess I'd better lie about my vasectomy on the application, then.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
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.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
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!
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
MC Hawking rules!!!!
Let him drop a little science on your ass.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
...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
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
No, wait, that's MY plan...
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
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.
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
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.
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.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
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.
-- He's fantastic, made of plastic....
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.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Hari Seldon, where are you now?
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.
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)
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!
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.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
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.
..don't panic
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 =-]
I KNEW IT! Stephen Hawking is George Clinton!!!!! (ever see them together? aha!) One Universe, under a Groove!
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
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
My reality check bounced.
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.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
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.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
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.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I'm amazed we got past 1961...
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.
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
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Hawking On Earth's Lifespan
cchcchcch...ptoo. Take that, Earth's lifespan.
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
shit, people won't laugh at Waterworld anymore. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
...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?
What'dya mean there's no BLINK tag!?
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, anyone? Babelfish reports that Hawkings says "The of university verses in a groove-brightly."
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?
sigs are a waste of space
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!
--Fire up the clue combine and harvest a clue!
--Intrope
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
>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.
sigs are a waste of space
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.
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.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
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)
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.
-This sig intentionally left blank
Wasnt Kurzweil the crazy guy from the X-files movie that told Mulder to go to Dallas?
--
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
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...
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?
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
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.
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.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
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.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
We have such a wonderful choice of catastrophies. The planet will become inhabitable.
:-) You could always die first from lightning strike, flood, fire, famine, earthquake, civil unrest, domestic discord or something as banal as old age.
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!
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.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
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!
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.
...
.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.
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 -
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
-Michael
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.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
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.
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!!
--
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
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..."
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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?
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
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.
sigs are a waste of space
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! ;-)
.sigs??
-- Don't you hate it when people comment on other people's
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
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
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
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.
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.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
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.
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...
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:
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
an article appeared in The Times here. Dated 30/Sep/00.
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... :(
Mr. Ska
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.
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E_NOSIG
"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.
And just fuck that one up as well.
Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?
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.
"Mary had a crypto key, she kept it in escrow, and everything that Mary said, the Feds were sure to know."
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.
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."