How Technology Might Avert an Apocalypse

First time accepted submitter deapbluesea writes "Matt Ridley recounts the many predictions of catastrophe that have been made by prominent figures in the past. 'The classic apocalypse has four horsemen, and our modern version follows that pattern, with the four riders being chemicals (DDT, CFCs, acid rain), diseases (bird flu, swine flu, SARS, AIDS, Ebola, mad cow disease), people (population, famine), and resources (oil, metals).' From over population, to pandemics, peak oil to climate change, Ridley provides examples of human innovation that have averted the disasters, real or imagined. He does not declare the doomsayers to be wrong, merely hyperbolic in their predictions. 'We hear a lot from those who think disaster is inexorable if not inevitable, and a lot from those who think it is all a hoax. We hardly ever allow the moderate "lukewarmers."' Given the current discussions on rich vs poor, conservative vs liberal, religious versus non-religious, maybe a little moderation should be in order. After all, there are a lot of examples of 'experts' who got it completely wrong in the past."

Comments

Re:War isn't one of the classic causes of Apocalyp

[Surt]

There's no sufficiently nearby candidate star to kill us with a gamma ray pulse. Giant asteroid can also be ruled out.

Apocalypse diverted by good people not technology

[fermion]

The world more than likely was going to starve until the Haber process was developed that allowed us to increase production of food. Saying that the food crisis was hyperbolic or was just randomly solved is sheer ignorance of history and technology. Fritz Harber and Carl Bosch, in Germany in the years prior to WWI likely saved the world from a major disaster. If it would have happened sooner, and Germany was able to have the resources it needed, the history of the early 20th century might have been much different.

In the 1970 the available oil was not keeping up with consumption. Very cheap oil form the middle east was disrupted and we were not yet into deep water drilling, directional drilling was just taking hold. Furthermore car fuel efficiency had reached a historical low with many cars only getting 10 miles to each gallon. Because people knew on which side their bread was buttered, they worked to figure out how to extract more oil and use energy more efficiently. We would have been in trouble if very smart people treated these threats as "hyperbolic". They were real.

As far as pesticides, stating the threat is not real or limiting the threat to cancer is sheer hooliganism. The runoff of chemical pesticides, chemical in general, is a health and food risk. The only question is if that risk is greater than the social damage of doing nothing. For many chemicals, the answer is yes, the risk is greater. The main reason is that often we can achieve about the same results with what are probably safer alternatives. It is like a car. If one can achieve about the same results with a more efficient automobile, why not?

This is major fallacy, IMHO. Often these debates are set up as between hard working firms and hippie environmentalists. This si simply not true. The reality is that in the modern world these debates are between embedded corporate interests and free thinking entrepreneurs. The American car industry wants you to think if failed because of unions, but really it failed because it ignored people who pushing new technology and processes, while the Japan did not. The good news is that even though polemicist is still going to fight to keep the change from happening, corporations are increasingly looking to their balance sheets and realizing that branding is the past and innovative products are the future. They realize that public relations campaigns to convince people that scientist are merely fear mongers are not nearly as effecient as paying the scientists to develop the solutions. Imagine if the germans had just said that the lack of food was fear mongering and not put money into Habers work. We might not only be starving now, but Germany would not have been able to mount a campaign with substantially smaller forces than the rest of Europe.

Because I sense that this article is not so much anti technology but anti-government, let me reiterate. Currently corporations are not ignoring problems, but that is because the government structure is there to encourage development. Let me give one more example, the flat screen TV. The CRT puts out a great deal of radiation and wastes a great deal of energy. Through a series of regulations at various national levels, a standard was put in place to limit the radiation of the CRT. The ultimate solution was the LCD, but that was expensive. However, in a short time, due to interaction between government and corporate interests, almost everyone has moved away from the CRT to a more efficient and safe LCD. Does the CRT really cause damage? Who knows, but because all this was done under the table we are saved from the hooligans of conservatism and libertarians shouting from the rooftops that the LCD is a communist plot and anyone who wants an LCD hates America, or whatever.