HUMANS

[chuck]

We haven't come up with a reliable way to get off this planet. The way the terrestrial transportation networks are coming apart at the seams we are having trouble getting around on this planet. When I said space was BIG I wasn't kidding.

While We can rattle off how big or how far something is away from us, it's extremely hard to represent this in a meaningful way. I think is was Nat Geo that had a two page spread of the earth and moon shot from above the ecliptic plane (solar probe shot image on way out). The earth was a about the size of a Mentos mint and was located in one outer diagonal corner of two page spread. The moon was about the size of a pencil eraser and was in the opposite diagonal corner. When viewed at this distance and from that point in space, the moon actually wobbles in and out of earths orbital path around the sun.

A) the moon is actually quite large, about 1/4 the size of the earth.
B) the moon is very far away which is why it doesn't look so large from earth.

As much as I wish we had FTL capabilities, I suspect humans (or any other terrestrial life forms) moving out into the cosmos is as far away in terms of time as everything else is far away in terms of space.

[HONDO74]

Necessity is the mother of invention (or there is enough money in it) Humans will figure it out eventually. Humans have been explorers since the beginning.

I always thought it was interesting that everything that humans were going to need was available on planet earth.

Is oil really a fossil fuel. Not according to the Abiotic Theory. But if it is a fossil fuel, Dinosaurs had to come before humans.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Hey HONDO, See what I meant by posting that I enjoyed learning things here?
daMurph

[HONDO74]

What would the population of the planet be like if oil, natural gas and coal did not exist. ?

The population of the planet exploded after the use of these fossil fuels became a major energy source.

Take a look at the population through the years and what happened after the 1860s when oil became useful.

World Population by Year
https://www.worldometers.info/world-pop ... n-by-year/

[Rufus T. Firefly]

What would the population of the planet be like if oil, natural gas and coal did not exist. ?

There are quite a few SF books that very successfully answer that question.

[HONDO74]

What would the population of the planet be like if oil, natural gas and coal did not exist. ?

There are quite a few SF books that very successfully answer that question.

Sorry, I am not familiar with these SF books ??

I have only within the last year started questioning things that I have taken for granted over the years especially with the big push to eliminate fossil fuels. I remember back in the 70s during the oil embargo's and the gas crunch there wee predictions we would run out of oil by now. And yet we seen to have more now than we did back then.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

What would the population of the planet be like if oil, natural gas and coal did not exist. ?

There are quite a few SF books that very successfully answer that question.

Sorry, I am not familiar with these SF books ??

Pretty favorite theme in SF genre for many decades - what if oil, natural gas and coal were unavailable or various tech ceased to work or was interdicted, or whatever.......also sort of folds into the steam-punk genre of SF/Fantasy.

[HONDO74]

SF Books....Science Fiction. Ok, I get it.

Relying on Science Fiction is like listening to the democrats tell us that the our world is going to end in 12 years if we don't stop using fossil fuels now. However they are getting their information from climate scientist that are saying the same thing. Who should we believe ?

n 1989, the Associated Press relayed a warning from a U.N. official:

"A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000."

The official was Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, who added: "Shifting climate patterns would bring back 1930s Dust Bowl conditions to Canadian and U.S. wheatlands.”

Instead, U.S. and global farm production rose, and more than 1 billion people worldwide rose out of extreme poverty due to economic growth.

DUST BOWL we have one of the wettest years that we have had. California's drought is over and they had a 50 ft snow pack in the Sierras.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

SF Books....Science Fiction. Ok, I get it.

Relying on Science Fiction is like listening to the democrats tell us that the our world is going to end in 12 years if we don't stop using fossil fuels now.

You're tying two disparate topics together there, but ok.

I didn't state to rely on it. More to use it as something to think about which is something that republicans are in short supply. And, quite a few bits from SF writers are realities today that everyone scoffed at when initially proposed as ideas. The ability to look forward can be useful if only to provoke thought; looking backwards with blinders on tends to facilitate terminal endpoints.

[HONDO74]

I didn't state to rely on it. More to use it as something to think about

Maybe if you had elaborated on it a little more I might have interpreted it differently.

Quote
"There are quite a few SF books that very successfully answer that question."

"that very successfully answer that question." Therein lies the problem for me as I am not aware of any SciFi books or movies that relate to that exact subject. Most SciFi in this area deals with post apocalyptic life after humans tried to eliminate each other.

Other than space travel and aliens.

My visualization is that the world would be a totally different place Most of us on this forum would probably not have been born.......

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Most SciFi in this area deals with post apocalyptic life after humans tried to eliminate each other.

Actually, no. At least not in my reading is it all post apocalyptic despite the popularity of that category and that's hardly a recent one as well. There's quite a lot that addresses a world with a limited steam & water powered technology as a high art form that never has use of fossil fuels.

My visualization is that the world would be a totally different place Most of us on this forum would probably not have been born.......

Yes. But that different place was not all that long ago......

[chuck]

The climate modeling software of the 1980's used to generate that report were woefully primitive. The computers capable of analyzing the limited data points were tied up designing ER warheads.

The weather patterns that as responsible for the current flooding in the plains are WEATHER patterns. Sustained weather patterns do indicate climatic changes. We don't have enough data points for definitive forecasts but the current data and vastly powerful computers and much more sophisticated computer models are painting an increasingly bleak picture.

Archaeological data indicates that the Sarah was once forested and that the change to desert was quite sudden. Much of the lower peninsula of Michigan was a great pine forest. That forests origins go back to the last ice age. The trees were stripped down in about 30 years time by people that wanted the lumber and wanted land cleared for farming. The vegetation that has taken over that cleared land is hardwood, not pine. Humans did that and it didn't' even take that long. We changed the climate over the entire lower peninsula in something like 50 years time. Because it was not immediately lethal it doesn't mean it was good.

Army Corps of Engineers have manipulated the connecting channels of the Great Lakes to facilitate commerce. This has been done in ways that vastly increase the wild fluctuations of Great Lakes water levels. The goals of improving navigation could have been accomplished without affecting water levels but the mechanisms we're deemed an unnecessary expense. Dredging is cheap and easy. The ultimate irony to me is that everyone complains about the shoreline erosion (aka it affects my properties value) or issues with docking their boats (aka my convenience) while ignoring 30 years of changing local weather patterns. (I spent my first eight years of steady work in the Detroit District Office of the COE which covered the drainage area of four of the five Great Lakes).

The flooding in the southern plains is a combination of too much rain AND the lowering of the ground being flooded by the removal of whatever was under that ground be it oil, gas, water, or mineral salts. The subsidence has been slow but persistent. So slow and wide spread that it is only measurable by careful surveying methods.

They were interviewing people along the southern Mississippi that were complaining about the failure to complete a "flood control" project from Bush 1's administration. It didn't matter that there was no place to put that much water. Everything below a certain elevation was submerged. There are not enough pumps and hoses to drain these areas.

I think it was a Pogo cartoon that summed it up best. We have met the enemy and it is us.

BTW Issac Asimov , Larry Niven, Phillip K. Dick, Frank Brunner and a host of others have done novella's or series of novels on alternate futures often shaped by dire consequences not related to a nuclear holocaust. Some of them actually have nothing to do with space let alone space aliens.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Much of the lower peninsula of Michigan was a great pine forest. That forests origins go back to the last ice age. The trees were stripped down in about 30 years time by people that wanted the lumber and wanted land cleared for farming. The vegetation that has taken over that cleared land is hardwood, not pine. Humans did that and it didn't' even take that long. We changed the climate over the entire lower peninsula in something like 50 years time. Because it was not immediately lethal it doesn't mean it was good.

PA was effectively clear cut lumbered 100 years ago. One never really knows what the longer term and longer range effects really are going to be.....

BTW Issac Asimov , Larry Niven, Phillip K. Dick, Frank Brunner and a host of others have done novella's or series of novels on alternate futures often shaped by dire consequences not related to a nuclear holocaust. Some of them actually have nothing to do with space let alone space aliens.

Been a lot of other writers since those 1st gen writers of the classics (John Brunner, maybe?). Brunner dealt with subjects a lot closer to home and it seemed his larger works had nothing to do with aliens or space.

[chuck]

Sorry, wrong Brunner. Frank was a comic book artist for Marvel in the 70's. He worked on Dr Strange and Howard the Duck.

Sheep Look Up has a great epilogue.

"We ought to call the (fire) brigade. Is it a hayrick?"

"The brigade would have a long way to go" the doctor told her curtly "It's from America. The wind is blowing that way"

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Sorry, wrong Brunner. Frank was a comic book artist for Marvel in the 70's. He worked on Dr Strange and Howard the Duck.

Sheep Look Up has a great epilogue.

"We ought to call the (fire) brigade. Is it a hayrick?"

"The brigade would have a long way to go" the doctor told her curtly "It's from America. The wind is blowing that way"

Yes. That small bit remained with me as well.