5 ms·

This kind of Malthusian thinking has a horrible track record. Imagine if we drastically altered the course of technological progress every time a cabal of "expe

This kind of Malthusian thinking has a horrible track record. Imagine if we drastically altered the course of technological progress every time a cabal of "experts" declares that we're going to destroy the planet. I'm not arguing that we should be reckless with the environment, but there are massive existential risks to humanity with this kind of self-limiting belief system. It's not obvious that one side of the argument is right. If we even slowed down to linear growth from our current exponential path, life on Earth would probably suck within a generation.

fny 4y ago
This whole paper is lazy, panic-ridden grift. Why lazy? Because it's core thesis is that fossil fuels are a natural constraint... The word "nuclear" does not appear a single time in the entire paper! We have more than enough carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen on this earth to do incredible things given an energy source. It's time to stop dooming and start exploring. Also, fuck Mars. Why not try to make the desert liveable?
- NortySpock 4y ago
  The clouds of Venus, 50km above the surface, also seem like a neat place to colonize. (relatively speaking)
  - dotandimet 4y ago
    The Gobi desert and the bottom of the ocean are far more hospitable for human colonization than anywhere off-planet (not to mention far, far cheaper and more energy-efficient)
- t0bia_s 4y ago
  I agree. We spending ridcolous amount of money and fuel to colonizing Mars/space but at same time we are not able to feed millions starving children on our planet. Instead of panicking we should change our politics, that seems to me, is pathological in many ways. Our planet have enough space and energy sources. For example in Russia there is a lot of inhabited places with great weather conditions to live, but it is politics who makes those places terrible to live in. Nuclear energy is incredible source of energy and waste could be shoot out into space? Alarmism that predict inevitable collapse of our planet and blaming individuals as a source of those problems is hypocrisy. Individual will never damage environment as corporates driven by lobby and politics.
  - adwn 4y ago
    > I agree. We spending ridcolous amount of money and fuel to colonizing Mars/space but at same time we are not able to feed millions starving children on our planet. And yet, in the very next sentence you contradict your own point (and rightly so): One is almost exclusively a technological problem, the other is almost exclusively a political problem. In nearly all cases, the reasons for a nation being underdeveloped are a mix of internal and external politics, and we still haven't figured out how to help them without making things worse in the long term. That's why it won't make one bit of a difference to them if we colonize Mars or not.
- abdullahkhalids 4y ago
  Energy source constraints are not the only ones that exist. We also extract many other things from the planet and transform them into other things that we use. These extractions/transformations are also very problematic, and subject to strong constraints. Examples: * The clearing of forests for farmland for the ever increasing population and increased (unneeded) calorie consumption per person destroys ecosystems, and kills species. * The growing of massive amounts of food extracts micronutrients from the soil, and these not replaced. This destroys the health of future generations. * Cement and concrete are made by naturally occurring rocks and minerals, and these are also fast depleting. Mining for more difficult sources also result in pollution and destruction of ecosystems. Pollution also negatively impacts the health of current and future generations, and concrete cities destroy ecosystems. * Plastics are made from fossil fuels. They break down into microplastics, and leach toxic chemicals into our food and water supplies. All of these examples involve negative externalities shared by everyone in the world. All of these examples stem from fast and continued growth.
  - weatherlite 4y ago
    Yep. And energy constraints still exist unless some major breakthrough happens, nuclear is a temporary solution because it is non renewable (see my comment above).
  - fny 4y ago
    What if we didn't have to use inorganic materials...
- MrPatan 4y ago
  > Also, fuck Mars. Why not try to make the desert liveable? Because it's too easy to get to the desert
- weatherlite 4y ago
  Nuclear energy is expensive, tricky to get right and constrained by Uranium. We have about 230 years at today's consumption rate left. Sounds like a lot but today's consumption isn't much...many countries barely use nuclear. So imagine what happens if we need to increase nuclear by 10x ...oops now we have 20 years worth of Uranium left. Also while not an expert on mining I do know that the best spots are mined first, meaning as/if we grow the dependency on Uranium it will only get more expensive to mine it in the coming decades. Hey we're alright for now don't get me wrong. But 30-50 years from now it will keep getting harder and harder to sustain us unless we make some impressive breakthroughs that no one can tell are gonna happen. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20NEA%2C%20identified,today's%20consumption%20rate%20in%20total https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-glo....
  - fny 4y ago
    It looks like you stopped reading. > Further exploration and improvements in extraction technology are likely to at least double this estimate over time It also looks like you've forgotten about thorium, and geothermal, and solar... My point is that the article is tremendously lazy.
    - weatherlite 4y ago
      I'm all for nuclear just lets keep in mind it's non renewable, expensive and tricky to get right. As for thorium I'm no expert but I assume you mean nuclear fission which is not a new concept and totally speculative at the moment is it was in the last 50 years. I really really hope there's a breakthrough soon that can be scaled cheaply. Solar and wind are very good but are built and maintained with fossil fuels and can't produce enough heat for heavy industrial processes like construction materials etc. We should totally go for them but they are a partial solution for a problem that might be unsolvable if we keep growing are energy consumption. I can't see why people resist the notion we need to bring energy consumption down.
throw827474737 4y ago
That's the third post in the line of saying that this is still a far fetched or just far away maybe assumption - which is mind boggling to me because it is jot a cabal of experts but basically science agrees we are very much on the edge (time horizon is uncertain in relation to a human life, but in regard to earths age too close to the edge..) to do that right now? And even if we'd had the time, our resources are finite, if we could do better (=sustainable for me) right now, why wait and sit on the lazy path and hope for future technological advances?
lm28469 4y ago
> has a horrible track record care to elaborate ? > Imagine if we drastically altered the course of technological progress every time a cabal of "experts" declares that we're going to destroy the planet. Yeah imagine if we did that when petrol producers had internal reports about how much we'd fuck the planet in 50 years. Imagine not entering this era of crazy pollution, unsustainability and war, imagine working on alternative energy sources earlier instead of being under the influence of lobbies, the absolute horror It made me think of that HN thread from a few weeks ago, people where boasting about their LIDAR enabled autonomous vacuum cleaners, if we stopped making these kinds of useless gadgets the world would suck within a generation ? I think the west grew weak, decades of unsustainable "growth" made their lifestyle degenerate in some kind of "convenience above all" lifestyle, their life is threatened if you take away their daily latte macchiato and their 4k oled tv. Some people really believe that if their amazon same day toilet paper delivery was to disappear the world would crash and burn in a single generation ? We collectively completely lost our minds, go talk to your grandparents, ask them how life was when their fridge wasn't bluetooth enabled and connected to their apple watch...

fny 4y ago

This whole paper is lazy, panic-ridden grift. Why lazy? Because it's core thesis is that fossil fuels are a natural constraint... The word "nuclear" does not appear a single time in the entire paper! We have more than enough carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen on this earth to do incredible things given an energy source. It's time to stop dooming and start exploring. Also, fuck Mars. Why not try to make the desert liveable?

NortySpock 4y ago
The clouds of Venus, 50km above the surface, also seem like a neat place to colonize. (relatively speaking)
- dotandimet 4y ago
  The Gobi desert and the bottom of the ocean are far more hospitable for human colonization than anywhere off-planet (not to mention far, far cheaper and more energy-efficient)
t0bia_s 4y ago
I agree. We spending ridcolous amount of money and fuel to colonizing Mars/space but at same time we are not able to feed millions starving children on our planet. Instead of panicking we should change our politics, that seems to me, is pathological in many ways. Our planet have enough space and energy sources. For example in Russia there is a lot of inhabited places with great weather conditions to live, but it is politics who makes those places terrible to live in. Nuclear energy is incredible source of energy and waste could be shoot out into space? Alarmism that predict inevitable collapse of our planet and blaming individuals as a source of those problems is hypocrisy. Individual will never damage environment as corporates driven by lobby and politics.
- adwn 4y ago
  > I agree. We spending ridcolous amount of money and fuel to colonizing Mars/space but at same time we are not able to feed millions starving children on our planet. And yet, in the very next sentence you contradict your own point (and rightly so): One is almost exclusively a technological problem, the other is almost exclusively a political problem. In nearly all cases, the reasons for a nation being underdeveloped are a mix of internal and external politics, and we still haven't figured out how to help them without making things worse in the long term. That's why it won't make one bit of a difference to them if we colonize Mars or not.
abdullahkhalids 4y ago
Energy source constraints are not the only ones that exist. We also extract many other things from the planet and transform them into other things that we use. These extractions/transformations are also very problematic, and subject to strong constraints. Examples: * The clearing of forests for farmland for the ever increasing population and increased (unneeded) calorie consumption per person destroys ecosystems, and kills species. * The growing of massive amounts of food extracts micronutrients from the soil, and these not replaced. This destroys the health of future generations. * Cement and concrete are made by naturally occurring rocks and minerals, and these are also fast depleting. Mining for more difficult sources also result in pollution and destruction of ecosystems. Pollution also negatively impacts the health of current and future generations, and concrete cities destroy ecosystems. * Plastics are made from fossil fuels. They break down into microplastics, and leach toxic chemicals into our food and water supplies. All of these examples involve negative externalities shared by everyone in the world. All of these examples stem from fast and continued growth.
- weatherlite 4y ago
  Yep. And energy constraints still exist unless some major breakthrough happens, nuclear is a temporary solution because it is non renewable (see my comment above).
- fny 4y ago
  What if we didn't have to use inorganic materials...
MrPatan 4y ago
> Also, fuck Mars. Why not try to make the desert liveable? Because it's too easy to get to the desert
weatherlite 4y ago
Nuclear energy is expensive, tricky to get right and constrained by Uranium. We have about 230 years at today's consumption rate left. Sounds like a lot but today's consumption isn't much...many countries barely use nuclear. So imagine what happens if we need to increase nuclear by 10x ...oops now we have 20 years worth of Uranium left. Also while not an expert on mining I do know that the best spots are mined first, meaning as/if we grow the dependency on Uranium it will only get more expensive to mine it in the coming decades. Hey we're alright for now don't get me wrong. But 30-50 years from now it will keep getting harder and harder to sustain us unless we make some impressive breakthroughs that no one can tell are gonna happen. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20NEA%2C%20identified,today's%20consumption%20rate%20in%20total https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-glo....
- fny 4y ago
  It looks like you stopped reading. > Further exploration and improvements in extraction technology are likely to at least double this estimate over time It also looks like you've forgotten about thorium, and geothermal, and solar... My point is that the article is tremendously lazy.
  - weatherlite 4y ago
    I'm all for nuclear just lets keep in mind it's non renewable, expensive and tricky to get right. As for thorium I'm no expert but I assume you mean nuclear fission which is not a new concept and totally speculative at the moment is it was in the last 50 years. I really really hope there's a breakthrough soon that can be scaled cheaply. Solar and wind are very good but are built and maintained with fossil fuels and can't produce enough heat for heavy industrial processes like construction materials etc. We should totally go for them but they are a partial solution for a problem that might be unsolvable if we keep growing are energy consumption. I can't see why people resist the notion we need to bring energy consumption down.

throw827474737 4y ago

That's the third post in the line of saying that this is still a far fetched or just far away maybe assumption - which is mind boggling to me because it is jot a cabal of experts but basically science agrees we are very much on the edge (time horizon is uncertain in relation to a human life, but in regard to earths age too close to the edge..) to do that right now? And even if we'd had the time, our resources are finite, if we could do better (=sustainable for me) right now, why wait and sit on the lazy path and hope for future technological advances?

lm28469 4y ago

> has a horrible track record care to elaborate ? > Imagine if we drastically altered the course of technological progress every time a cabal of "experts" declares that we're going to destroy the planet. Yeah imagine if we did that when petrol producers had internal reports about how much we'd fuck the planet in 50 years. Imagine not entering this era of crazy pollution, unsustainability and war, imagine working on alternative energy sources earlier instead of being under the influence of lobbies, the absolute horror It made me think of that HN thread from a few weeks ago, people where boasting about their LIDAR enabled autonomous vacuum cleaners, if we stopped making these kinds of useless gadgets the world would suck within a generation ? I think the west grew weak, decades of unsustainable "growth" made their lifestyle degenerate in some kind of "convenience above all" lifestyle, their life is threatened if you take away their daily latte macchiato and their 4k oled tv. Some people really believe that if their amazon same day toilet paper delivery was to disappear the world would crash and burn in a single generation ? We collectively completely lost our minds, go talk to your grandparents, ask them how life was when their fridge wasn't bluetooth enabled and connected to their apple watch...