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My pessimistic side says that the conditions for intelligent life are so implausible that we’re unique, and when we drain the planet dry of easily-accessible fo

My pessimistic side says that the conditions for intelligent life are so implausible that we’re unique, and when we drain the planet dry of easily-accessible fossil fuels we’ve deprived any successor civilization of its opportunity to escape the planet. Basically I fear we’re the universe’s only shot of appreciating and populating the galaxy (or beyond) and we’re on the brink of throwing that away.

Qem 1y ago
> ...when we drain the planet dry of easily-accessible fossil fuels we’ve deprived any successor civilization of its opportunity to escape the planet. On the flip side, that could also be plausibly a blessing, avoiding them to fall into the same trap of becoming too powerful before they get wise. These comics illustrate it: https://www.badspacecomics.com/post/grounded https://www.badspacecomics.com/post/grounded
HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago
As long as we have air and water (i.e. as long as we're alive), then we can make propellants such as Methane or Liquid Hydrogen and LOX, Hydrazine & Dinitrogen Tetroxide (or Hydrogen Peroxide).
- macintux 1y ago
  None of which are, I assume, as easy/efficient/effective to integrate into a new civilization's tech tree as coal & oil.
  - HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago
    What has that got to do with energy dense rocket fuels for getting to orbit ?!
    - macintux 1y ago
      The key phrase was "successor civilization".
  - crazygringo 1y ago
    So? We build nuclear power plants and it's not exactly easy/efficient to extract uranium. Hard things are done all the time. Having coal/oil is pretty irrelevant in terms of whether a civilization can build spacecraft.
    - macintux 1y ago
      "and when we drain the planet dry of easily-accessible fossil fuels we’ve deprived any successor civilization of its opportunity to escape the planet." Successor. Whoever comes along after we've done ourselves in.
      - crazygringo 1y ago
        Huh? "We" is the human race, whatever civilization. What point are you trying to make? What I said stands, exactly how I said it.
Shekelphile 1y ago
> when we drain the planet dry of easily-accessible fossil fuels we’ve deprived any successor civilization of its opportunity to escape the planet. There will be no successor civilization to humans. Earth won't be able to support multicellular life in a few hundred million years due to the sun becoming gradually more luminous over time, resulting in higher surface temperatures that will eventually culminate in a runaway greenhouse happening, as it already has on Venus. Due to human-driven climate change effects this event will certainly happen much sooner (<100m years) as well, which is simply not enough time for another intelligent species to evolve after a large-scale extinction event. Even if life evolving on earth was an incredibly rare event the chance of such circumstances not happening elsewhere even in our own galaxy is infinitely small - there are trillions of planets and 100b+ stars. On top of that there are 100s of billions of galaxies within the observable universe as well.
- delta_p_delta_x 1y ago
  > Due to human-driven climate change effects this event will certainly happen much sooner (<100m years) as well No, it will not. Human driven climate change is drastic, but the Earth has seen far worse events than our anthropogenic carbon emissions. For instance, the Chicxulub impactor at the end of the Cretaceous changed atmospheric conditions overnight, and to a much greater degree than whatever we have cooked up. It was the equivalent of detonating the world's entire nuclear arsenal about a million times over. Sure, it finished off the dinosaurs. But 66 million years later, we, the descendants of tiny rodent-like mammals, are still here, as are the dinosaur's own descendants, the birds. Additionally, during the Carboniferous about 300 Mya, both carbon dioxide and oxygen levels were considerably higher than they are today, and life actually thrived. I would say that with the increasing luminosity, there will be at least a decent period on Earth where life returns to that sort of diversity. We are actually still only in an interglacial of an ice age—this has effectively sterilised large tracts of our planet by covering them with ice sheets, or locking permafrost into the soil and making them unavailable for large trees. Let me be very clear: our emissions—if unchecked—will make life very difficult for us as the rising seas and temperatures scatter millions of people out of coastal cities in the tropics further north and south and cause war, division, strife, and discord like we have never yet seen. But actually bring forward the planet's overall demise? Nearly impossible. Let's not have the hubris to think we puny humans could remotely affect the planet's geological timeline. If we somehow all disappear simultaneously, most direct evidence that we ever lived will disappear with us–perhaps within a hundred thousand to a million years of erosion and weathering. Our emissions will similarly lurch to a halt and will reach equilibrium within a similar time span. That's all it takes to remove our direct creations from the geological record.

Qem 1y ago

> ...when we drain the planet dry of easily-accessible fossil fuels we’ve deprived any successor civilization of its opportunity to escape the planet. On the flip side, that could also be plausibly a blessing, avoiding them to fall into the same trap of becoming too powerful before they get wise. These comics illustrate it: https://www.badspacecomics.com/post/grounded https://www.badspacecomics.com/post/grounded

HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago

As long as we have air and water (i.e. as long as we're alive), then we can make propellants such as Methane or Liquid Hydrogen and LOX, Hydrazine & Dinitrogen Tetroxide (or Hydrogen Peroxide).

macintux 1y ago
None of which are, I assume, as easy/efficient/effective to integrate into a new civilization's tech tree as coal & oil.
- HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago
  What has that got to do with energy dense rocket fuels for getting to orbit ?!
  - macintux 1y ago
    The key phrase was "successor civilization".
- crazygringo 1y ago
  So? We build nuclear power plants and it's not exactly easy/efficient to extract uranium. Hard things are done all the time. Having coal/oil is pretty irrelevant in terms of whether a civilization can build spacecraft.
  - macintux 1y ago
    "and when we drain the planet dry of easily-accessible fossil fuels we’ve deprived any successor civilization of its opportunity to escape the planet." Successor. Whoever comes along after we've done ourselves in.
    - crazygringo 1y ago
      Huh? "We" is the human race, whatever civilization. What point are you trying to make? What I said stands, exactly how I said it.

Shekelphile 1y ago

> when we drain the planet dry of easily-accessible fossil fuels we’ve deprived any successor civilization of its opportunity to escape the planet. There will be no successor civilization to humans. Earth won't be able to support multicellular life in a few hundred million years due to the sun becoming gradually more luminous over time, resulting in higher surface temperatures that will eventually culminate in a runaway greenhouse happening, as it already has on Venus. Due to human-driven climate change effects this event will certainly happen much sooner (<100m years) as well, which is simply not enough time for another intelligent species to evolve after a large-scale extinction event. Even if life evolving on earth was an incredibly rare event the chance of such circumstances not happening elsewhere even in our own galaxy is infinitely small - there are trillions of planets and 100b+ stars. On top of that there are 100s of billions of galaxies within the observable universe as well.

delta_p_delta_x 1y ago
> Due to human-driven climate change effects this event will certainly happen much sooner (<100m years) as well No, it will not. Human driven climate change is drastic, but the Earth has seen far worse events than our anthropogenic carbon emissions. For instance, the Chicxulub impactor at the end of the Cretaceous changed atmospheric conditions overnight, and to a much greater degree than whatever we have cooked up. It was the equivalent of detonating the world's entire nuclear arsenal about a million times over. Sure, it finished off the dinosaurs. But 66 million years later, we, the descendants of tiny rodent-like mammals, are still here, as are the dinosaur's own descendants, the birds. Additionally, during the Carboniferous about 300 Mya, both carbon dioxide and oxygen levels were considerably higher than they are today, and life actually thrived. I would say that with the increasing luminosity, there will be at least a decent period on Earth where life returns to that sort of diversity. We are actually still only in an interglacial of an ice age—this has effectively sterilised large tracts of our planet by covering them with ice sheets, or locking permafrost into the soil and making them unavailable for large trees. Let me be very clear: our emissions—if unchecked—will make life very difficult for us as the rising seas and temperatures scatter millions of people out of coastal cities in the tropics further north and south and cause war, division, strife, and discord like we have never yet seen. But actually bring forward the planet's overall demise? Nearly impossible. Let's not have the hubris to think we puny humans could remotely affect the planet's geological timeline. If we somehow all disappear simultaneously, most direct evidence that we ever lived will disappear with us–perhaps within a hundred thousand to a million years of erosion and weathering. Our emissions will similarly lurch to a halt and will reach equilibrium within a similar time span. That's all it takes to remove our direct creations from the geological record.