On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 5:18 AM, Eugen Leitl <eu...@leitl.org> wrote: [...] >> Human history is full of lost civilizations, in the global age we are >> all a single civilization - why shouldn't we be the next in line to be >> affected by environmental factors a la Indus valley or the Maya. > > Yeah, I'm also onboard of Diamond's Collapse. Particularly systemic > failure of complex systems through concerted propagation of individual > failures is pretty scary, and arguably already observable in places.
I didn't know of Diamond's Collapse, I've partially read Guns, Germs and Steel - sounds like an interesting book. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed [...] >> [1] Not pure hyperbole, arsenic based life forms: >> http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/astrobiology_toxic_chemical.html > > It's supposed to be a facultative arsenate utilizer, and the paper is > under serious fire, and is likely to be retracted. Attempting to sell the paper on hype backfired for sure, but that doesn't make the ability to substitute arsenic for carbon worthless. >> [2] Seven billion of us soon, nine billion in 2045. Let’s hope that > > I don't see how we're supposed to go to nine gigamonkeys without > some serious crop failure and starvation along the way. If you think about it there's not much a large government(s) can do. It's like searching for the keys under the street light rather than where one lost it. We have plans to stop asteroids from hitting the earth since that's easily fixed, because of course historically more civilizations were killed off by asteroids than drought and famine. >> Malthus was right about our ingenuity. >> http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/seven-billion/kunzig-text/1 > > The problem is that ingenuity is typically directed towards better > killing thy neighbor, once the food fight gets serious enough. A whole lot of Africa, and to a lesser degree the Indian sub-contintent, parts of China, and Americas will be affected. Previous generations went through the world wars with attendant food rations, water rations and such, we will probably have to repeat that exercise. > >> [3] Water from Alaska for the middle east: >> http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/08/the-race-to-buy-up-the-world-s-water.html >> {The oil tankers turning into water tankers is surprising but we don't >> even blink at the thought of bottled water which has been commonplace >> for decades now} >> [4] Food production must be increased 70 percent to provide for the >> extra 2.4 billion people expected to come aboard planet Earth by 2050. >> http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/news/chiefeditor/2009/10/food-for-nine-billion-people.html > > Yeah, I wonder why water and food doesn't come up as limits to growth > more often. A blind spot the size of Texas. Not blind spot, elephant in the room. China, India, Japan, S Korea and the West are buying up land in Africa for a reason. Cheeni Cheeni
