[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'M')y point is that we transcend other species and our fate is (I deeply believe) in our own hands. It is true that we have harmed the Earth beyond measure. It is also true that we can save ourselves in many ways - I happen to favor the simplest and easiest to carry off, because of that principle called Ockham's razor, aka the Law of Parsimony.

[KaiserJeep]

Pstarr, in the Silly Valley, people claiming to be Earth Firsters use fire bombs on car dealerships, shoot out insulators on high tension power lines, and slash through the thousands of fibers in our fiber optic trunks. I certainly would not be proud of any alliance with those eco-terrorist types, granted that they are a different crowd than yours.

My point is a simple one. SEVEN POINT THREE BILLION HUMANS already exist. You cannot deny them away, you cannot negotiate away their needs, and only a few, an insignificant number, share your particular values, or even the lower common denominator which is a reverence for nature, for that matter. More people practice slash and burn agriculture than conserve rainforests. More people slaughter a variety of critters as "bush meat" than observe any precautions about endangered species.

I don't care how sincere you are - and you and I are closer to agreeing than you apparently believe - but we are both on the minority opinion side of the world as a whole when it comes to priorities about people and environment. Every third person on Earth is Chinese and pretty darn few reverence nature - what environmental laws they have recently passed are simply to appear to be in compliance with their trading partners so that other countries environmental legislation does not mess up their business. It hasn't slowed down their construction of coal power plants, or the habitat destruction of the Pandas, for examples.

Has that light bulb come on in your head yet? American values do not apply to the vast majority of those seven point three billion. THAT is why you have two choices. But even if you never do agree with me on this particular topic, you and me and everybody else is totally and completely screwed by the mere destructive presence of that much population overshoot. As I said in the message above, I cling to two slender threads of hope. But in reality, I think the Earth is toasted pretty darn soon - peak oil is only the closest of an endless number or resource shortages. In their struggle to live, those 7.3B complete the destruction of the environment - because most plants and animals can be eaten by humans in one form or another, after suitable processing. I think the most probable day for the end of the world is in 2095, and neither one of us will ever know for sure.

So G-d D----t, CHOOSE ALREADY. Either consciously promote the welfare of everybody including you, or take your feeble-minded "living planet" theme to a logical conclusion and start tossing firebombs, before cutting your own throat. If you believe there are any other choices, you need to think longer and harder.

[Pops]

now, now, shouldn't go there.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', ' ')your opinions on Peak Oil, AGW, and Doom were -ah- "fossilized" sometime in your youth, and you now operate in a mode where you consciously exclude data and evidence that contradicts your pre-existing opinion.

Which behavior is pretty much the polar opposite of the behavior needed to conduct Scientific investigations. But no matter how many times I make this point, it also falls upon deaf ears.

[SeaGypsy]

Geez I started a storm in KJ's teacup missed a few days.
(Someone would have if I didn't obviously.)

h2, I have loved your rants since your first here, Ibon top of my list to visit in 'real' from here, Pops could be my dad if he had lived long enough & KJ is peakoil.com's most deluded scientist, always entertaining, rarely to be taken as seriously as he might like. The bull is cornered.

[KaiserJeep]

KK, I never said ship the whole population off Earth. I said almost everybody dies. The right 100 people are a viable genetic sample of the species. The right 3500 people can conserve every human gene.

Yes, absolutely, getting a viable set of human breeders off the planet before it goes BOOM in a nuclear war, or collapses into total environmental failure after people have scoured every edible plant and animal and consumed it, and then each other, and then died - is indeed a trivial task when compared to something really hard like trying to save the Earth without resorting to human genocide first. Orbital insertion is not very economical at the moment, but if you read the publications of the National Space Society (produced in 1980 by the merger of Werner von Braun' National Space Institute and the L5 Society) the space habitat design is quite mature - we are being foolish not to have started construction, using the endless raw materials and energy already in space. The L5 and L4 Lagrange points are the obvious place to put the first two habitats.

[hvacman]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')In actuallity I worked for years to stop the destruction of the last redwood forests by being arrested with many brave Earth Firsters. You don't know shit.

[SeaGypsy]

KJ refusing as usual to see the point outside his own- that besides being probably impossible according to the laws of physics & biology (both relatively firmly established real sciences/ contrasting the very blurry pseudo science & physics & biology blended in the extraterrestrial travel industry) but besides- is utterly futile. Pointless beyond words. It's only usefulness is in calling out those of us ready to argue both or either the impossibility or pointless futility of this train of thought.

Reverting to pretty disgusting attempted character assassination against established board members in response to this essential & sane critique reeks of the she hypocrisy I also witnessed directly in the earth first movement in Australia & California in the late 80s-early 90s except in that case at least something was right about the endeavour.

[KaiserJeep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'n')ow, now, shouldn't go there.

[SeaGypsy]

I'm sure ibon is quite mature enough to see your confusion for what it is rather than taking personal offense. A few years ago some of the mods here might have got a lot grumpier than Pops.

[Pops]

NP, KJ, I get hot here and there.

The problem I think comes after one identifies the problem and then extrapolates a trend.

Malthus wasn't wrong, he just didn't allow for change, food was able to keep up with population longer than he thought. Ditto the great fondness on this and other similar sites for the Exponential Function. It is instructive as far as it goes but there is no law that says an exponential curve can't get bent.
Is there?

My pessimism stands out when looking at the trends but my optimism overcomes it when I think of our great ability to change, not just invent new stuff but to actually, intentionally change our course.

Which is why I am as well read a "prepper" as most any I know — and at the same time regularly accused of being a cornucopian.

[KaiserJeep]

SG, if the world is gonna end - and that does unfortunately seem very likely - then I want my grandkids to leave first. The rest of you need to "think outside the box", to again abuse that tired old cliche.

If you find you just cannot do that, cannot even think about it, then simply stay behind and perish. The competition for the few seats will be fierce at first, but will eventually become who can pay for the ticket to leave the obviously dying Earth.

Engineering is the practice of continuously improving technology. You will never know the names of the Engineers who make space travel possible. If you do learn somebody's name, it is because they practice either Politics or Science or Marketing, and not Engineering. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Wernher von Braun were not actually practicing Engineering. Nor is Elon Musk. But all of these famous people both understood what Engineers do and then made it possible for dozens, even hundreds of Engineers to practice their profession, and implement the visions the more famous "name" had created.

At the end of each successful Engineering project, we hold a formal critique and list what we could have done better, given hindsight. We learn things that make every new product obsolete before it is first shipped to the public. The next iteration of product design starts off better than the last, because of the things we learned on the most recent design iteration.

We have been iterating space travel for 70 years, since the first German V2's skimmed the edge of space to rain high explosives onto London.

Edit: No, Pops, no reason that reality must adhere to the pure mathematical curve - in fact the act of measuring something changes it's value, according th Heisenberg.

We can change almost anything - except the basic nature of the critter Ibon calls Kudzu Ape. Among the less palatable (at least to me) ways that we may adapt ourselves to space is Genetic Engineering. For example, somebody living in zero "G" probably has more use for four arms and four hands than two arms and two legs. He might also benefit from a prehensile tail. We do now possess the means - if not the wisdom - to change our nature. So far, we have been wise enough not to do that, aside from limited applications such as selecting healthy embryos and assisting infertile people to reproduce.

I suspect however, that even a "human" with four arms and a tail would be just as ignorant, just as greedy, and just as fallable as are most people on Earth today. Because I don't think we know enough to engineer new mental capacity or abilities.

[SeaGypsy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', ' ')It is a dubious honor at best, to realize that humans are the deadliest thing to ever harm the planetary ecology so far. But you can only be an advocate for the planet by also advocating the genocide of at least 6.3 Billion humans, and I stop short of that position, and consider anybody who is a conscious advocate of "Mother Earth" or whatever other nonsensical term, to be both a genocidal maniac and a hypocrite.

[SeaGypsy]

KJ I would rather my children (watching TV next to me in a tent on the beach as I write this) died as my 3 year old worried last night- from a 'shooting star' than spinning around in a lead lined doughnut drowning in their own detritus. We obviously have a different view of compassion.

[KaiserJeep]

SG, nobody is Engineering the human race, or human culture, or even suggesting that infinite growth is desirable. We are in the mess we are in, because we went blindly on and ignored the Reverend Malthus for two centuries. Again, hindsight shows us our mistakes - but those 7.3B people are here, and the World dies because of them. Our problem is a very simple concept, but terribly hard to fix, probably impossible.

So we "kick the can" and buy ourselves enough time for evolution - or perhaps genetic engineering - to change our nature. We are still the same apes that wiped out our rival apes the Neanderthals, we have not changed at all in at least 18,000 years. It is foolish to first speculate about how we must change, then say we will because we must.

Wrong. We die. Those smart enough not to be present when TEOTWAWKI happens, they survive.

You have volunteered to take your own genes out of play, I can respect that. But the O'Neill Colonies will be the only clean and healthy places that are left - get a glimpse of everyone's future by watching the 2013 movie Elysium. They got a few things wrong - the habitat is the older Willy Ley doughnut design, as seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The habitat is in near Earth orbit, not a LaGrange point. The Earth's surface is completely trashed, and unhealthy. Not completely accurate, but close enough to see what I am talking about.

[SeaGypsy]

Now you are being a moron KJ. If you can't retain a degree of civility around here I suggest you take a holiday. My children & progeny have as much chance as any other/ much more than most actually. Take your high horse & shove it where it fits.

[KaiserJeep]

Well, we can agree to disagree, SG. I think Peak Oil and the decline that follows is in fact TEOTWAWKI. Like I said, I still do hold out some hope for survival on the planet - but an ecology with so many broken links is going to be deadly. The oceans are dying already, faster than the land.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'W')e can change almost anything - except the basic nature of the critter Ibon calls Kudzu Ape