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There's a fun catch here though. Earth is going to face a natural destruction sooner or later. Be it by a gamma ray burst, a super-volcanic eruption, an asteroi

by rjf72 7y ago

There's a fun catch here though. Earth is going to face a natural destruction sooner or later. Be it by a gamma ray burst, a super-volcanic eruption, an asteroid impact, or any of other other practically infinite number of ways it can happen, has happened (multiple times), and will happen again soon or later. So we're all effectively living on borrowed time. You can't create a permanently sustainable Earth in a beautiful equilibrium because that's not how this universe works. It loves to throw a spanner in the works, over and over. And so the point of this is that it's only by racing against an unknown clock that one can hope to actually sustain humanity. Consequently, our rapid development which is undoubtedly causing harm to Earth is likely also, equally without doubt, the very thing that may ultimately enable humanity to survive in the longrun. We already have all the resources we need to become a space faring civilization, except for one - public will. People of course want it, but also simultaneously think space is a fantasy, much like at one time crossing the ocean was seen as. And so it's put on the side burner while we focus on much more pressing matters, like what some politician or celebrity said on Twitter. If a tenth of the energy we spend on social media or trying to shove ads at each other was focused on space, we'd already have set foot on Mars.

soulofmischief 7y ago
That doesn't mean we aren't grossly misappropriating and wasting our resources and reducing our chances of achieving long-term civilization.
matt_j 7y ago
Cataclysmic events occur on geological timescales. Historically no species survives more than some thousands or perhaps millions of years, timescales short enough to fit between unavoidable extinction events. Humanity is currently on a path to destroy the earth's capability to sustain us, on a timescale that is laughably small compared to geological timescales. If we behaved better, humanity could conceivably exist for hundreds of thousands, or millions of years without being obliterated by an asteroid or colossal volcanic eruption(s). At the rate we're going, we won't last another few hundred years before we create an environment so toxic and unlivable that we extinguish ourselves. Luckily a few rich crap heads will get even richer before that happens, bless their cotton socks, so it will all have been worth it.
- rjf72 7y ago
  Even with today's technology there's no real path to making earth literally inhospitable within the foreseeable future, sans an intentional act like somebody exploding a salted nuke in the atmosphere. But we can, and probably will, certainly make it less hospitable. More importantly though technology will continue to improve and, for events that happen on a slow time scale, we have a good chance of helping to mitigate the most catastrophic of effects. Even in the worst case though where we somehow remain stuck with 2020 tech for centuries, there's no species ending level scenario on the books. The problem, by contrast, with the natural disasters is not only their effect but how incredibly rapid it happens. For instance we nearly caused a very gradual catastrophe with CFCs by gradually depleting the ozone layer over many decades. Something similar has been suggested as the cause for the Ordovician extinction. Except there what caused the destruction of the atmospheric layer was a gamma ray burst, and it only would have taken a few seconds. This is even more apparent with things like asteroid impacts. We've had an increasingly large number (or probably more accurately we can now actually 'see' them a bit more accurately) whiz by us at a tiny fraction of the distance to the moon. If a single one of these made impact you're looking at the equivalent of millions of WW2 scale nuclear weapons going off, at once. And of course it's not just the immediate impact, but then the massive cooling and darkening of Earth that would follow. If this happened over decades to centuries we could probably survive through technological means, but we wouldn't have that luxury. It would happen over a matter of seconds, and then days as the fallout embraced the Earth with its tainted touch.

by rjf72 7y ago

soulofmischief 7y ago

That doesn't mean we aren't grossly misappropriating and wasting our resources and reducing our chances of achieving long-term civilization.

matt_j 7y ago

Cataclysmic events occur on geological timescales. Historically no species survives more than some thousands or perhaps millions of years, timescales short enough to fit between unavoidable extinction events. Humanity is currently on a path to destroy the earth's capability to sustain us, on a timescale that is laughably small compared to geological timescales. If we behaved better, humanity could conceivably exist for hundreds of thousands, or millions of years without being obliterated by an asteroid or colossal volcanic eruption(s). At the rate we're going, we won't last another few hundred years before we create an environment so toxic and unlivable that we extinguish ourselves. Luckily a few rich crap heads will get even richer before that happens, bless their cotton socks, so it will all have been worth it.

rjf72 7y ago
Even with today's technology there's no real path to making earth literally inhospitable within the foreseeable future, sans an intentional act like somebody exploding a salted nuke in the atmosphere. But we can, and probably will, certainly make it less hospitable. More importantly though technology will continue to improve and, for events that happen on a slow time scale, we have a good chance of helping to mitigate the most catastrophic of effects. Even in the worst case though where we somehow remain stuck with 2020 tech for centuries, there's no species ending level scenario on the books. The problem, by contrast, with the natural disasters is not only their effect but how incredibly rapid it happens. For instance we nearly caused a very gradual catastrophe with CFCs by gradually depleting the ozone layer over many decades. Something similar has been suggested as the cause for the Ordovician extinction. Except there what caused the destruction of the atmospheric layer was a gamma ray burst, and it only would have taken a few seconds. This is even more apparent with things like asteroid impacts. We've had an increasingly large number (or probably more accurately we can now actually 'see' them a bit more accurately) whiz by us at a tiny fraction of the distance to the moon. If a single one of these made impact you're looking at the equivalent of millions of WW2 scale nuclear weapons going off, at once. And of course it's not just the immediate impact, but then the massive cooling and darkening of Earth that would follow. If this happened over decades to centuries we could probably survive through technological means, but we wouldn't have that luxury. It would happen over a matter of seconds, and then days as the fallout embraced the Earth with its tainted touch.