19 ms·

Earth Could Be Alien to Humans by 2500 (2021)

28 points by benchmarkist 2y ago

mg 2y ago
Without clothes, houses, heating and running water, fertilizers, tractors and specially bred crops, Earth would be pretty alien to us today. I wonder what technologies we will have at our disposal in 500 years.
- amanaplanacanal 2y ago
  Probably much higher quality AI generated misinformation.
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  I'm quite bullish on widespread fuel synthesis being a thing. It's carbon neutral, sure, but the big benefit in the Earth I'm familiar with is it's entirely decentralized. There's absolutely no need for conflict over concentrated oil and gas reserves, and no need to manage all these supply lines. Just head down to your local LCH4 plant and get your tanks refilled, paying similar prices as today, just the cost goes directly to energy and capex rather than all these storage and transport networks.
karmakurtisaani 2y ago
I the discussion about climate change we often forget that by not decreasing emissions we create truly great shareholder value. Seriously though, we were supposed to decrease emissions by 40% by 2030 to keep things under control. I recently saw in the news that we are on track to just make it to 2% drop. It's not looking good.
- sqeaky 2y ago
  Somehow I thought it was still on the rise, this is not the worst news I've heard this week.
  - croisillon 2y ago
    true, when the biggest economy in the history of the world votes for climate deniers, i don't know what much hope is left
    - ben_w 2y ago
      Unpredictable in many ways. On economic, I hear talk about looking for 2 trillion in cuts; that's likely to cause economic stagnation all by itself as previously observed in e.g. UK austerity measures since the financial crisis in the late 00s. Even on a smaller scale, any given cut is hard to forecast as a good/bad idea for the organisation itself (in the case the government) even for the guy at the top: for example consider that Musk cut what he thought of as pointless waste in each of his businesses, which works great in Tesla and SpaceX, has been a disaster for Twitter. Also, China is close to a peer, and deploying renewables and battery vehicles as fast as possible — and yes also coal last I heard. Then there's the talk of Musk being brought in despite the obvious conflict of interest. Wonder how that's going to play out, but given a substantial part of his wealth comes from electric vehicles, it's worth noting. On the other hand he wants thousands of Starship launches and has yet to demonstrate the Sabatier machines that would be necessary for (1) Mars and (2) making this carbon neutral on Earth.
      - philjohn 2y ago
        Looking at the figures on China it feels like Coal is cheap and easy to deploy as a short term measure, but they're also investing heavily in renewables as you said (2X the rest of the world combined last year) and Nuclear. For just how much is made there, and on a per capita basis, China isn't doing too badly - neither is the UK, the US on the other hand has had super cheap energy for a long time, and a whole lot is predicated on it, so it's going to be tougher (even tougher now).
        ashoeafoot 2y ago
        China is fakeing most of it and our press only reports it as existing and true to coax our politicians into doing something ..anything. My tip: If you read fantastic news, google the location and look on it from space. Any game changer should be visible and viable from orbit. And it is but often enough..no powerlines or tramsformers. Planned economies, they reach their goals, to promote bureaucrats , reality be damed.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ebi-moussa 2y ago
  [dead]
jmclnx 2y ago
[flagged]
rambojohnson 2y ago
who cares, I'll be dead by then. -- conservatives
- 11235813213455 2y ago
  Talking about deads, many have better housing than living people, I wish I could camp in a cemetery often (calm, trees, clean air)
listenallyall 2y ago
Forget Earth, humans of 2500 will be alien to us (humans of 2024). Likely embedded with chip implants, living huge portions of their lives virtually, bionic parts, nutrition injections, who knows. If a person from 1500 saw us today, he'd recognize we are human but every aspect of our lives -- electricity, screens, driving, etc -- would make no sense. But the rate of change from 1500 to 2000 is very low compared to what we can expect 2000 to 2500.
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
  Yup. People often don’t take this into account.
MrHamburger 2y ago
We will need technology of terraforming anyway in the future. So developing it to stabilize climate so current planet won't kill us is better motivation than developing it for Mars or Venus. And I think that eventually we will ends up with massive shade between Earth and Sun, because it will be solution with least capital expenditure to achieve stable climate while not requiring great changes in our lives, as that seems to be issue with common folk and their general resistance to green solutions. This achievement will then unlock ability to terraform Venus, because shading it is first step to cool it down.

28 points by benchmarkist 2y ago

mg 2y ago

Without clothes, houses, heating and running water, fertilizers, tractors and specially bred crops, Earth would be pretty alien to us today. I wonder what technologies we will have at our disposal in 500 years.

amanaplanacanal 2y ago
Probably much higher quality AI generated misinformation.
jvanderbot 2y ago
I'm quite bullish on widespread fuel synthesis being a thing. It's carbon neutral, sure, but the big benefit in the Earth I'm familiar with is it's entirely decentralized. There's absolutely no need for conflict over concentrated oil and gas reserves, and no need to manage all these supply lines. Just head down to your local LCH4 plant and get your tanks refilled, paying similar prices as today, just the cost goes directly to energy and capex rather than all these storage and transport networks.

karmakurtisaani 2y ago

I the discussion about climate change we often forget that by not decreasing emissions we create truly great shareholder value. Seriously though, we were supposed to decrease emissions by 40% by 2030 to keep things under control. I recently saw in the news that we are on track to just make it to 2% drop. It's not looking good.

sqeaky 2y ago
Somehow I thought it was still on the rise, this is not the worst news I've heard this week.
- croisillon 2y ago
  true, when the biggest economy in the history of the world votes for climate deniers, i don't know what much hope is left
  - ben_w 2y ago
    Unpredictable in many ways. On economic, I hear talk about looking for 2 trillion in cuts; that's likely to cause economic stagnation all by itself as previously observed in e.g. UK austerity measures since the financial crisis in the late 00s. Even on a smaller scale, any given cut is hard to forecast as a good/bad idea for the organisation itself (in the case the government) even for the guy at the top: for example consider that Musk cut what he thought of as pointless waste in each of his businesses, which works great in Tesla and SpaceX, has been a disaster for Twitter. Also, China is close to a peer, and deploying renewables and battery vehicles as fast as possible — and yes also coal last I heard. Then there's the talk of Musk being brought in despite the obvious conflict of interest. Wonder how that's going to play out, but given a substantial part of his wealth comes from electric vehicles, it's worth noting. On the other hand he wants thousands of Starship launches and has yet to demonstrate the Sabatier machines that would be necessary for (1) Mars and (2) making this carbon neutral on Earth.
    - philjohn 2y ago
      Looking at the figures on China it feels like Coal is cheap and easy to deploy as a short term measure, but they're also investing heavily in renewables as you said (2X the rest of the world combined last year) and Nuclear. For just how much is made there, and on a per capita basis, China isn't doing too badly - neither is the UK, the US on the other hand has had super cheap energy for a long time, and a whole lot is predicated on it, so it's going to be tougher (even tougher now).
      - ashoeafoot 2y ago
        China is fakeing most of it and our press only reports it as existing and true to coax our politicians into doing something ..anything. My tip: If you read fantastic news, google the location and look on it from space. Any game changer should be visible and viable from orbit. And it is but often enough..no powerlines or tramsformers. Planned economies, they reach their goals, to promote bureaucrats , reality be damed.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ebi-moussa 2y ago
[dead]

jmclnx 2y ago

[flagged]

rambojohnson 2y ago

who cares, I'll be dead by then. -- conservatives

11235813213455 2y ago
Talking about deads, many have better housing than living people, I wish I could camp in a cemetery often (calm, trees, clean air)

listenallyall 2y ago

Forget Earth, humans of 2500 will be alien to us (humans of 2024). Likely embedded with chip implants, living huge portions of their lives virtually, bionic parts, nutrition injections, who knows. If a person from 1500 saw us today, he'd recognize we are human but every aspect of our lives -- electricity, screens, driving, etc -- would make no sense. But the rate of change from 1500 to 2000 is very low compared to what we can expect 2000 to 2500.

BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
Yup. People often don’t take this into account.

MrHamburger 2y ago

We will need technology of terraforming anyway in the future. So developing it to stabilize climate so current planet won't kill us is better motivation than developing it for Mars or Venus. And I think that eventually we will ends up with massive shade between Earth and Sun, because it will be solution with least capital expenditure to achieve stable climate while not requiring great changes in our lives, as that seems to be issue with common folk and their general resistance to green solutions. This achievement will then unlock ability to terraform Venus, because shading it is first step to cool it down.