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As Michio Kaku said, "Any advanced civilization must grow in energy consumption faster than the frequency of life-threatening catastrophes (e.g. meteor impacts,
by f_allwein 10y ago
As Michio Kaku said, "Any advanced civilization must grow in energy consumption faster than the frequency of life-threatening catastrophes (e.g. meteor impacts, ice ages, supernovas, etc.). If they grow any slower, they are doomed to extinction." ( http://mkaku.org/home/articles/the-physics-of-extraterrestrial-civilizations/ http://mkaku.org/home/articles/the-physics-of-extraterrestri... ).
Any guesses how far we are from being able to control volcanoes so that they would not pose a threat? Too far, I would guess.
- tajen 10y agoAdd the Big One in SF, the 180ft tsunami of Vancouver, the global warming acceleration, the halt the Gulf Stream and the Yosemite explosion, and 2017 can be awesome. Or 5017, which is geological times is the same.
- ewhanley 10y agoI think you mean Yellowstone rather than Yosemite.
- adrianN 10y agoI don't think we have actually tried anything like that, but people have thought about the problem. Possible engineering avenues include drilling relief holes to reduce pressure, siphoning heat with geothermal energy plants and inducing eruptions using explosives. It seems like making volcanoes safer is doable with concentrated research effort, but currently nobody wants to pay for it. I guess that'll change after Naples is destroyed.
- marcosdumay 10y agoIt should be possible to make siphoning the heat away lucrative, instead of an expense. I really don't know how much heat we are talking about (still, I don't think migrating all aluminum plants into above the supervolcanos would be enough), but it is not the kind of thing we should count as expense.
- goda90 10y agoI think civilization's best hope would be that technology manages to keep a small group of people thriving without direct sunlight(for growing food) until the negative affects of the catastrophe are reduced by natural processes or geo-engineering. If we can setup systems that can provide energy without need of a large network of resources and manufacturing to maintain(nuclear with a stockpile, geothermal, robust wind turbines), then people could live on artificially lit agriculture for generations.
- aaron695 10y agoVolcanoes have never extincted all life, why are you worried they might extinct human life in the next million years? If we haven't found out everything by then we never will.