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I worry that these scientists are focused on the 21st Century simply because many people will only care about this if it happens during our lifetimes. But if we

I worry that these scientists are focused on the 21st Century simply because many people will only care about this if it happens during our lifetimes. But if we care about our great-grandchildren, we should also be worried about the 22nd Century, and the possibility that the Gulf Stream will collapse before the year 2200 is great.

ben_w 2y ago
Predicting things that far ahead is almost impossible. Looking back, the greenhouse effect of CO2 was known in the 1800s, but even at the end of that century people thought it would take a millennium and be good. Looking forward, it's technically possible (yes I have done the maths) to build a global power grid today such that the Scaninavian arctic midwinter can be powered by solar panels in New Zealand, but only China makes enough aluminium and only China has demonstrated any interest in attempting massive infrastructure projects of this kind for soft power projection. When do we get von Neumann replicators? Do we make GM algae that turn atmospheric CO2 directly into crude oil to substitute fossil oil in the petrochemical industry? Will fundamentalists Hindus create a synthetic disease that induces an allergy to beef thus causing an end to cattle farming? Will the Russian invasion of Ukraine escalate into WW3? I can't tell which specific big things will radically change the world, but I am sure there's going to be at least one every 25 years — one between today and 2050, at least two more by 2100, and at least four between 2100 and 2200.
- IIAOPSW 2y ago
  >Looking back, the greenhouse effect of CO2 was known in the 1800s, but even at the end of that century people thought it would take a millennium and be good. IIRC Charles Babbage wrote in his survey of British Industry for the royal society words to the effect of "it is not presently known how exactly the coal exhaust is recycled back into the ground". Maybe some people correctly guessed that it wasn't recycled at all and in fact is an expendable (albeit quite large) resource, but their guess was as good as any other and far from something that was widely known and believed.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    By "the end of that century" I mean 1896 and Svante Arrhenius, which was a bit after Babbage died (1871). Arrhenius published an update in 1908 (not sure when he realised the mistake) accounting for the increased rate of CO2 emissions, stating that would be "beneficial"[0] in his own lifetime — he ended up dying in 1927, I'll let others decide if it was a net good or bad by that point. [0] Wikipedia's citation for this is "Arrhenius, S., Worlds in the Making: The Evolution of the Universe. New York, Harper & Row, 1908," — https://dn790004.ca.archive.org/0/items/worldsinmakingev00arrhrich/worldsinmakingev00arrhrich.pdf https://dn790004.ca.archive.org/0/items/worldsinmakingev00ar... I can find the "beneficial" part, but not (yet) the "in [his] lifetime" part. Quoting from the linked archive copy: "By the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates, especially as regards the colder regions of the earth, ages when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at present, for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind." - page 63.
- candiddevmike 2y ago
  > I can't tell which specific big things will radically change the world, but I am sure there's going to be at least one every 25 years — one between today and 2050 Aren't we still due for one between now and 2025 then?
  - ben_w 2y ago
    We've had several. The first draft of the Human Genome Project was only published in 2003, but that covered 92% of the genome; it only got up to 99.7% in 2022. Personal genome tests are now regularly on special offer for a few hundred bucks rather than the $2.7 billion (non-inflation adjusted) of the original Human Genome Project. Genetic engineering was possible in 1999, but it wasn't until 2005 that CRISPR was discovered, 2006 that it was theorised how it might function, 2007 that this was demonstrated, 2012 until it was patented, and 2013 until it became commercially viable. Mobiles and the web technically existed in 1999, but the former were mostly black and white screens with number-pad keyboards and the latter was mostly dialup; now it's good enough that the global pandemic we just went through had a lot of people switch to remote work — and ask to keep doing that after the pandemic restrictions ended. The tech that enabled the vaccines to be created so fast, or even their genomes to be sequenced so fast, didn't exist in 1999. PV existed in 1999, but there was a total installed nameplate capacity of 0.8 GW; in 2022 that was 1061.7 GW, with an estimated 341-402 GW in 2023 and 600-660 GW this year, likely taking the nameplate capacity over the current total global electricity demand. (The capacity factor was 14% in 2022, so there's room for the nameplate capacity to become 700% of current global electrical demand). 3D printers existed in 1999, but cheap domestic models only happened around the time of RepRap in 2005. Brief period where it seemed everyone was worried about domestic printers making guns, now industrial printers make spaceship engines. AI has gone from "squiggly line under a mis-spelled word", Norns with tiny neural nets, and the state machines of video game NPCs, to what is essentially the character of the main computer on TNG era Star Trek, complete with universal translator, creating interactive NPCs and environments on the fly, and letting us talk to an always-listening microphone when we want to change which music is playing or what mood we want the lights to provide. China has gone from "LOL" to "superpower". North Korea got nukes (and if they can do it, anywhere bigger than a tiny island or a city-state can do it). Pakistan, which has nukes, had a military coup in 1999; 9/11 was a pretty big event that shifted American international behaviour, but the choices the US government made in Iraq and Afghanistan were sufficiently tone-deaf to the locals it likely played a significant role in the rise of ISIS.
- lamontcg 2y ago
  > Looking back, the greenhouse effect of CO2 was known in the 1800s, but even at the end of that century people thought it would take a millennium and be good. There's an argument that agriculture and predominantly rice cultivation in China already did this. And that the Anthropocene started ~10,000 years ago and prevented CO2 in the atmosphere from falling to 150 ppm CO2 or so, and prevented the formation of continental shield glaciers by now. Since the end of the last ice age and Earth's axial tilt reaching its maximum 10,000 years ago, the Earth's axial tilt has been decreasing and that should have started a cooling trend towards the onset of a glacial period. Instead, we've had pretty consistent temperatures for the past 10,000 years.

ben_w 2y ago

Predicting things that far ahead is almost impossible. Looking back, the greenhouse effect of CO2 was known in the 1800s, but even at the end of that century people thought it would take a millennium and be good. Looking forward, it's technically possible (yes I have done the maths) to build a global power grid today such that the Scaninavian arctic midwinter can be powered by solar panels in New Zealand, but only China makes enough aluminium and only China has demonstrated any interest in attempting massive infrastructure projects of this kind for soft power projection. When do we get von Neumann replicators? Do we make GM algae that turn atmospheric CO2 directly into crude oil to substitute fossil oil in the petrochemical industry? Will fundamentalists Hindus create a synthetic disease that induces an allergy to beef thus causing an end to cattle farming? Will the Russian invasion of Ukraine escalate into WW3? I can't tell which specific big things will radically change the world, but I am sure there's going to be at least one every 25 years — one between today and 2050, at least two more by 2100, and at least four between 2100 and 2200.

IIAOPSW 2y ago
>Looking back, the greenhouse effect of CO2 was known in the 1800s, but even at the end of that century people thought it would take a millennium and be good. IIRC Charles Babbage wrote in his survey of British Industry for the royal society words to the effect of "it is not presently known how exactly the coal exhaust is recycled back into the ground". Maybe some people correctly guessed that it wasn't recycled at all and in fact is an expendable (albeit quite large) resource, but their guess was as good as any other and far from something that was widely known and believed.
- ben_w 2y ago
  By "the end of that century" I mean 1896 and Svante Arrhenius, which was a bit after Babbage died (1871). Arrhenius published an update in 1908 (not sure when he realised the mistake) accounting for the increased rate of CO2 emissions, stating that would be "beneficial"[0] in his own lifetime — he ended up dying in 1927, I'll let others decide if it was a net good or bad by that point. [0] Wikipedia's citation for this is "Arrhenius, S., Worlds in the Making: The Evolution of the Universe. New York, Harper & Row, 1908," — https://dn790004.ca.archive.org/0/items/worldsinmakingev00arrhrich/worldsinmakingev00arrhrich.pdf https://dn790004.ca.archive.org/0/items/worldsinmakingev00ar... I can find the "beneficial" part, but not (yet) the "in [his] lifetime" part. Quoting from the linked archive copy: "By the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates, especially as regards the colder regions of the earth, ages when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at present, for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind." - page 63.
candiddevmike 2y ago
> I can't tell which specific big things will radically change the world, but I am sure there's going to be at least one every 25 years — one between today and 2050 Aren't we still due for one between now and 2025 then?
- ben_w 2y ago
  We've had several. The first draft of the Human Genome Project was only published in 2003, but that covered 92% of the genome; it only got up to 99.7% in 2022. Personal genome tests are now regularly on special offer for a few hundred bucks rather than the $2.7 billion (non-inflation adjusted) of the original Human Genome Project. Genetic engineering was possible in 1999, but it wasn't until 2005 that CRISPR was discovered, 2006 that it was theorised how it might function, 2007 that this was demonstrated, 2012 until it was patented, and 2013 until it became commercially viable. Mobiles and the web technically existed in 1999, but the former were mostly black and white screens with number-pad keyboards and the latter was mostly dialup; now it's good enough that the global pandemic we just went through had a lot of people switch to remote work — and ask to keep doing that after the pandemic restrictions ended. The tech that enabled the vaccines to be created so fast, or even their genomes to be sequenced so fast, didn't exist in 1999. PV existed in 1999, but there was a total installed nameplate capacity of 0.8 GW; in 2022 that was 1061.7 GW, with an estimated 341-402 GW in 2023 and 600-660 GW this year, likely taking the nameplate capacity over the current total global electricity demand. (The capacity factor was 14% in 2022, so there's room for the nameplate capacity to become 700% of current global electrical demand). 3D printers existed in 1999, but cheap domestic models only happened around the time of RepRap in 2005. Brief period where it seemed everyone was worried about domestic printers making guns, now industrial printers make spaceship engines. AI has gone from "squiggly line under a mis-spelled word", Norns with tiny neural nets, and the state machines of video game NPCs, to what is essentially the character of the main computer on TNG era Star Trek, complete with universal translator, creating interactive NPCs and environments on the fly, and letting us talk to an always-listening microphone when we want to change which music is playing or what mood we want the lights to provide. China has gone from "LOL" to "superpower". North Korea got nukes (and if they can do it, anywhere bigger than a tiny island or a city-state can do it). Pakistan, which has nukes, had a military coup in 1999; 9/11 was a pretty big event that shifted American international behaviour, but the choices the US government made in Iraq and Afghanistan were sufficiently tone-deaf to the locals it likely played a significant role in the rise of ISIS.
lamontcg 2y ago
> Looking back, the greenhouse effect of CO2 was known in the 1800s, but even at the end of that century people thought it would take a millennium and be good. There's an argument that agriculture and predominantly rice cultivation in China already did this. And that the Anthropocene started ~10,000 years ago and prevented CO2 in the atmosphere from falling to 150 ppm CO2 or so, and prevented the formation of continental shield glaciers by now. Since the end of the last ice age and Earth's axial tilt reaching its maximum 10,000 years ago, the Earth's axial tilt has been decreasing and that should have started a cooling trend towards the onset of a glacial period. Instead, we've had pretty consistent temperatures for the past 10,000 years.