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It's clear that this rate of growth is not sustainable. Everyone knows that, though not everyone acknowledges it. Population growth must top out somewhere. The

by api 8y ago

It's clear that this rate of growth is not sustainable. Everyone knows that, though not everyone acknowledges it. Population growth must top out somewhere. The most likely mechanism is the same one that's driven birth rate decline in developed nations: affluence. The end of huge scale population growth doesn't mean human extinction or even significant population decline, though it may mean financial crisis and a major re-invention of modern finance around models that do not depend on eternal massive GDP growth. Wars of course will happen. People fight wars. Modern wars don't have body counts like they used to. A war between the USA and Russia or the USA and China would -- unless nukes come out in force -- be largely fought by machines with body counts far lower than WWI and WWII. (USxChina would be a full-on cyberpunk mech battle.) Wars also tend to be followed by periods of expansion, so don't pin your "hope" on war to reduce human population or environmental effects in the long term. I've simply come to terms with the fact that we have entered the Anthropocene. The holocene geological epoch has ended. If you want to slap a date on the anthropocene, I'd go with July 16th, 1945, the date of the Trinity atomic test. That was the point at which the evolutionary ratchet clicked and regression to a pre-industrial state became game-theoretically impossible. Subsequent atomic testing also furnishes a nice neat line in geological strata that will be clearly visible to any geologists of the far distant future. We are in the early anthropocene, which seems characterized by increased CO2 and methane concentrations, increased temperatures, and plummeting biodiversity. The latter is a common characteristic of geological boundary events. The fact that this one was caused by the emergence of large scale industrialized intelligence instead of a meteorite or volcanism doesn't much matter. When the environment drastically changes a lot of species die off. What happens next is debatable. It's likely that intelligence will soon figure out massively scalable renewable energy (it's close) and/or fusion. That combined with depletion of fossil fuels will mean CO2 emissions will probably fall off a cliff by mid-century. The big CO2 pump is probably a H-A (Holocene-Anthropocene) boundary event like the line of radioisotopes from early atomic testing. CO2 has a long half-life in the atmosphere but we don't know what biology is going to do as the planet warms and all that CO2 is hanging around. There could be a huge burst in photosynthesis. The Cretaceous period, the last epoch with similarly high CO2 concentrations, also had about 150% today's oxygen concentration in the atmosphere. Maybe that will happen by a few hundred years from now. I'm thinking the Anthropocene is going to look a bit like the Cretaceous. The loss of biodiversity here on Earth is depressing, but on the positive side it's likely that the Anthropocene will see the spread of organic life from Earth to its Moon, Mars, and possibly other locations in the solar system. It may also see the birth of self-replicating machine intelligences, an entirely new offshoot of life adapted for large-scale growth beyond the planet's biosphere. A moderate number of humans and associated symbiotic plants and animals might colonize other worlds, but I'd predict that post-biological life will make the big leap from atmosphere to space (analogous to the leap from the oceans to land). Us with our clunky space suits are like lungfish.

malvosenior 8y ago
This is a very interesting perspective and it's too bad it's being downvoted. I think there are three schools of thought around this: * Environmental conservatives who think change in ecosystem, populations... is bad. * Environmental objectivists who acknowledge that change is constant, species are still participating in evolution and that there is no such thing as "good" or "bad" as far as nature is concerned. * Normal people who haven't satisfied all levels of Maslow's hierarchy and are thus focused on living their lives with little to no thought to the environment. We hear a lot from that first group. I'd put your comment in the second and it's quite refreshing. I suspect the third group fits more with the second than the first when pushed.
- api 8y ago
  I'm closer to the middle position. An alien watching Earth would not be making value judgements. It would be observing geological change. Moralistic value judgements like "we are destroying the Earth" are anthropocentric, even when they are self-condemnatory. Species self-hatred is historically pretty big with humans and it hasn't stopped us from doing what we're doing. If anything it contributes. Aggressive self-criticism is part of the psychology of an aggressive creature. When we look in the mirror we do so with forward facing eyes. Don't get me wrong... I think it would be a very good thing if we could stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere so much. I'm less concerned with the Earth than I am with presently-living and soon-to-be-living human beings. As George Carlin said: "Stop talking about saving the Earth! The Earth will be fine! We're fXXked!" The reason I've "stopped worrying and learned to love the Anthropocene" is that I see dramatic short term cuts to CO2 emissions as a political impossibility. The best strategy is probably to plan for CO2-driven climate change as a certainty, but also to explore potential geo-engineering approaches. It's possible that we could at least blunt the impact by pulling some CO2 from the air using phytoplankton, desert irrigation, etc. I like the ocean phytoplankton ideas because this would pull CO2 out of the ocean and ocean acidification is potentially worse than climate change. Developed nations actually have cut CO2 emissions a bit on a per-capita and per-dollar-GDP basis (e.g. USA carbon emissions peaked around 2000 I think), but the problem is that there are billions of people in the world climbing out of poverty and CO2-emitting power sources are still by far the cheapest and easiest energy sources to deploy. This is doubly true for developing nations that don't have the expertise to do nuclear or large scale renewable energy. "Burn crap, boil water, make wheel spin" is pretty simple, old, commodity tech. The problem is both social and game-theoretic. Game-theoretically global CO2 emission cuts would require an all-cooperate scenario that seems unlikely given the massive economic benefit of defecting. The social problem comes when rich developed nations try to finger-wag at developing nations for emitting more CO2. The response is along the lines of "screw you, we're poor, fXXk off." It comes off sounding hypocritical and elitist because it sort of is... we got where we are by burning a lot of fossil fuel, so who are we to tell Asians or Africans they can't do the same thing? The recent election in Brazil was in part a rejection of environmental restrictions in favor of populist growth policies. Now toss in the fact that the world is presently going through its globalization trough of disillusionment. Nationalism is rising everywhere. This makes all-cooperate game theoretic scenarios even more hopeless. The only -- and I mean the only -- hope is that we will develop a very low or zero carbon energy source that is cheaper than coal and gas on a levelized 24-hour basis and that can be deployed just about as easily. I think we'll probably get there eventually, but I doubt Mr. Fusion will arrive in time to keep CO2 under 600-800ppm at a minimum. I wouldn't be surprised at all if it hits 1000ppm. Africa today is where China was in the 90s... brace yourself for another billion people industrializing and modernizing. Better start researching geo-engineering and preparing to move Miami. I do like to look at the plus side too though. I'm looking forward to more African cultural exports.

by api 8y ago

malvosenior 8y ago

This is a very interesting perspective and it's too bad it's being downvoted. I think there are three schools of thought around this: * Environmental conservatives who think change in ecosystem, populations... is bad. * Environmental objectivists who acknowledge that change is constant, species are still participating in evolution and that there is no such thing as "good" or "bad" as far as nature is concerned. * Normal people who haven't satisfied all levels of Maslow's hierarchy and are thus focused on living their lives with little to no thought to the environment. We hear a lot from that first group. I'd put your comment in the second and it's quite refreshing. I suspect the third group fits more with the second than the first when pushed.

api 8y ago
I'm closer to the middle position. An alien watching Earth would not be making value judgements. It would be observing geological change. Moralistic value judgements like "we are destroying the Earth" are anthropocentric, even when they are self-condemnatory. Species self-hatred is historically pretty big with humans and it hasn't stopped us from doing what we're doing. If anything it contributes. Aggressive self-criticism is part of the psychology of an aggressive creature. When we look in the mirror we do so with forward facing eyes. Don't get me wrong... I think it would be a very good thing if we could stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere so much. I'm less concerned with the Earth than I am with presently-living and soon-to-be-living human beings. As George Carlin said: "Stop talking about saving the Earth! The Earth will be fine! We're fXXked!" The reason I've "stopped worrying and learned to love the Anthropocene" is that I see dramatic short term cuts to CO2 emissions as a political impossibility. The best strategy is probably to plan for CO2-driven climate change as a certainty, but also to explore potential geo-engineering approaches. It's possible that we could at least blunt the impact by pulling some CO2 from the air using phytoplankton, desert irrigation, etc. I like the ocean phytoplankton ideas because this would pull CO2 out of the ocean and ocean acidification is potentially worse than climate change. Developed nations actually have cut CO2 emissions a bit on a per-capita and per-dollar-GDP basis (e.g. USA carbon emissions peaked around 2000 I think), but the problem is that there are billions of people in the world climbing out of poverty and CO2-emitting power sources are still by far the cheapest and easiest energy sources to deploy. This is doubly true for developing nations that don't have the expertise to do nuclear or large scale renewable energy. "Burn crap, boil water, make wheel spin" is pretty simple, old, commodity tech. The problem is both social and game-theoretic. Game-theoretically global CO2 emission cuts would require an all-cooperate scenario that seems unlikely given the massive economic benefit of defecting. The social problem comes when rich developed nations try to finger-wag at developing nations for emitting more CO2. The response is along the lines of "screw you, we're poor, fXXk off." It comes off sounding hypocritical and elitist because it sort of is... we got where we are by burning a lot of fossil fuel, so who are we to tell Asians or Africans they can't do the same thing? The recent election in Brazil was in part a rejection of environmental restrictions in favor of populist growth policies. Now toss in the fact that the world is presently going through its globalization trough of disillusionment. Nationalism is rising everywhere. This makes all-cooperate game theoretic scenarios even more hopeless. The only -- and I mean the only -- hope is that we will develop a very low or zero carbon energy source that is cheaper than coal and gas on a levelized 24-hour basis and that can be deployed just about as easily. I think we'll probably get there eventually, but I doubt Mr. Fusion will arrive in time to keep CO2 under 600-800ppm at a minimum. I wouldn't be surprised at all if it hits 1000ppm. Africa today is where China was in the 90s... brace yourself for another billion people industrializing and modernizing. Better start researching geo-engineering and preparing to move Miami. I do like to look at the plus side too though. I'm looking forward to more African cultural exports.