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"We" now and "we" ten thousand years from now are very different people. Those in the future will laugh at your concerns for them. It's as if ancient Egyptians

"We" now and "we" ten thousand years from now are very different people. Those in the future will laugh at your concerns for them. It's as if ancient Egyptians would worry about whether we, now, have enough flood plain space to harvest crops.

oliwarner 7y ago
This assumes we don't screw ourselves into another dark age via societal breakdown climate disasters. Both events seem increasingly likely within 100 years, let alone 10,000 years. Humanity in Y12019 might be exactly where we are now.
- manigandham 7y ago
  In that case there's no problem with fuel.
  - ben_w 7y ago
    Exactly where we are, but without all of the easily available petrochemical and coal deposits.
rabidrat 7y ago
Those in the near- and medium- future are already lamenting our lack of concern for them :(
ryanmercer 7y ago
>Those in the future will laugh at your concerns for them. Those 100 years in the future may shake their fists at us with fury as they die off regularly in their early 20s from cancer from breathing plastic-lousy air, from drinking plastic and chemical-lousy water, from eating what food that manages to survive the harsh weather and periods of drought - that just so happens to have various levels of heavy metal contamination from the soil it grew in. In ten thousand years, there might not be anything remotely resembling what we think of humans today.
fsloth 7y ago
Nuclear fuel is a non-trivial resource. There is no basis for thinking we will ever find anything better. Scientific progress is not a law of nature. It needs very specific environment to thrive. Before scientific revolution kicked in the pharaohs would have easily adjusted to europe and elsewhere. No one can predict whether there is an infinite amount of scientific progress ahead of us or will we hit a wall.
- vlovich123 7y ago
  Fusion is powered off of hydrogen, the single most abundant element in the universe. Seems to me like the smart bet is that sometime within 3000-300k years humanity will have developed fusion.
  - cyphar 7y ago
    Cold, net-positive fusion. Current fusion reactors either require more power than they output or would run far too hot to be sustainable. While I too am hopeful that humanity will be able to crack cold fusion in the next few hundred millennia, it should be noted that cold fusion is something which has simply not occurred in our universe before. Yes, fusion is the most commonly-occuring process in the universe, but all of it runs hot. It is possible that net-positive cold fusion might never come to pass and we'll have to go back to solar panels so we can exploit the output of already-existing hot fusion from the Sun.
    - tsimionescu 7y ago
      Why would you need cold fusion? Simply net-positive energy output from a (hot) fusion reactor would do the trick. Of course, there is a risk there that we will hit some fundamental efficiency limitation that simply makes it not worth it. But st least it's not known to be a physical impossibility, like cold fusion is believed to be. In fact, more than cold fusion, I think there is a reason to hope for warm superconductors at some point in the future.
      - cyphar 7y ago

oliwarner 7y ago

This assumes we don't screw ourselves into another dark age via societal breakdown climate disasters. Both events seem increasingly likely within 100 years, let alone 10,000 years. Humanity in Y12019 might be exactly where we are now.

manigandham 7y ago
In that case there's no problem with fuel.
- ben_w 7y ago
  Exactly where we are, but without all of the easily available petrochemical and coal deposits.

rabidrat 7y ago

Those in the near- and medium- future are already lamenting our lack of concern for them :(

ryanmercer 7y ago

>Those in the future will laugh at your concerns for them. Those 100 years in the future may shake their fists at us with fury as they die off regularly in their early 20s from cancer from breathing plastic-lousy air, from drinking plastic and chemical-lousy water, from eating what food that manages to survive the harsh weather and periods of drought - that just so happens to have various levels of heavy metal contamination from the soil it grew in. In ten thousand years, there might not be anything remotely resembling what we think of humans today.

fsloth 7y ago

Nuclear fuel is a non-trivial resource. There is no basis for thinking we will ever find anything better. Scientific progress is not a law of nature. It needs very specific environment to thrive. Before scientific revolution kicked in the pharaohs would have easily adjusted to europe and elsewhere. No one can predict whether there is an infinite amount of scientific progress ahead of us or will we hit a wall.

vlovich123 7y ago
Fusion is powered off of hydrogen, the single most abundant element in the universe. Seems to me like the smart bet is that sometime within 3000-300k years humanity will have developed fusion.
- cyphar 7y ago
  Cold, net-positive fusion. Current fusion reactors either require more power than they output or would run far too hot to be sustainable. While I too am hopeful that humanity will be able to crack cold fusion in the next few hundred millennia, it should be noted that cold fusion is something which has simply not occurred in our universe before. Yes, fusion is the most commonly-occuring process in the universe, but all of it runs hot. It is possible that net-positive cold fusion might never come to pass and we'll have to go back to solar panels so we can exploit the output of already-existing hot fusion from the Sun.
  - tsimionescu 7y ago
    Why would you need cold fusion? Simply net-positive energy output from a (hot) fusion reactor would do the trick. Of course, there is a risk there that we will hit some fundamental efficiency limitation that simply makes it not worth it. But st least it's not known to be a physical impossibility, like cold fusion is believed to be. In fact, more than cold fusion, I think there is a reason to hope for warm superconductors at some point in the future.
    - cyphar 7y ago