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Technology races ahead faster and faster while population flattens out yet lots of people insist on doom against reason. It is a psychological problem.
by youngerdryas 14y ago
Technology races ahead faster and faster while population flattens out yet lots of people insist on doom against reason. It is a psychological problem.
- graeme 14y agoTechnology requires support from resources. You can't respond to claims that our resources are limited merely by arguing that we will develop more technologies that use resources.
- seanmcdirmid 14y agoWe have enough uranium mined to last us about 1 or 2 thousands year. Now, with energy we can do things like desalinate water and make fertilizer. The only reason we don't do more nuclear power now is because there are cheaper options.
- wombleton 14y agoThe argument is not that we will suddenly be unable to desalinate water and so forth, it's that the price will rise to put more people into starvation. Claiming that all that will happen is the price (for energy, food, water, soil, maintaining biodiversity, etc) will rise is exactly the problem.
- rdl 14y agoIt doesn't even need to push us anywhere near starvation to suck. If we have cheap non-renewable resources, they allow us to live a much better quality of life than we would otherwise. If a barrel of oil comes out of the ground with 5 minutes of human effort, and then lets us fly from SFO to NYC, that's one level of awesomeness. If we burn up all the easy oil and the barrel of oil requires an hour of human effort to bring out of the ground, we're worse off. Technology helps (maybe we can drill more efficiently, and maybe we can burn the oil more efficiently, and maybe we can find a good substitute for oil), but If we had a certain economic surplus due to high quality natural resources being available, then having more people means we need to use lower-quality marginal sources. Plus, with time, we use up the high quality natural resources. More productive people should help us improve technology as well, vs. just providing more total labor. On the other hand, if population increases to the point where surplus is reduced, we're less likely to invest in education or other investments which improve the value of human capital, focusing instead on subsistence.
- randallsquared 14y agoExcept that newer technologies typically use different resources for the same basic category of need, or use resources more efficiently. Including nuclear and solar, there's plenty of energy to be had, and you can use more energy and less of everything else for almost any purpose.
- graeme 14y agoSolar uses only the energy that comes in on an annual basis. With fossil fuels, we get to use the stored energy of millions of years. Solar has a much lower EROI than oil and coal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_inves... Nuclear has a better EROI. One question is if we could build enough plants before an increase in energy prices due to scarcity. That would make investment much more cost prohibitive.
- kzrdude 14y agobring your reasonable arguments instead of insulting the people you argue with, please.
- youngerdryas 14y agoSorry, kzrdude. I meant that in general. The end is always nigh, yet it always fails to materialize, this is a known phenomenon. I should be more clear. Sorry to have offended you.
- kzrdude 14y agoI'm not really offended. I'm only noting that you didn't have any arguments from reason to contribute.