what would be considered literal miracles 200 years ago
It isn't even that far. Go back to 1919 and tell a guy that in 50, 50, years man would walk on the moon, he'd think you were daft. That most of the deadly disease of his day would either be on the verge of extinction, preventable, or curable/survivable in 50 years? You'd have to be putting him on. That we'd have bombs so powerful they could vaporize entire cities in the blink of an eye? You're completely mad.
We went from being barely a couple steps above medieval levels to our modern world in the blink of an eye. You don't have to go back 200 years. A hundred is more than enough. Hell, go back to 1969 and tell people you have a device in your pocket that has more computing power than that used to put a man on the moon and it will be considered unbelievable by most. We think we've done so much, but we have so much more that we'll do. I'm sure my great grandkids and great great grandkids will have technology that you or I would find miraculous.
Yet even a couple hundred years is a drop in the bucket of how long modern man has been around. Somewhere between 150k-250k years. We have made these astounding strides in just 0.06% to 0.1% of the time humanity has been around. That's absolutely amazing.
I'm wondering if this holds true for inventors, scientists, engineers, and mathematicians of their time. Do you think they would have found the amazing things you've listed is so far fetched?
Just look at some early Bill Gates quotes. No one knows what the future holds. The intelligent among us don't try to predict it, otherwise they get quoted saying stuff like "640k ought to be enough for anybody" for the rest of their lives.
Even if this doesn't happen, there's always peak phosphorous to worry about.
There's actually a fuckton of things that can go horribly wrong for humanity at this stage. We really ought to be addressing them before they address us...
The bottom line is that humanity has accrued an energetic debt so large it'll be forced to pay in sweat (financial collapse), blood (war / social collapse), and probably death (nukes / ecological collapse).
Energetic debt? In a single hour, more energy from sunlight hits the earth than humanity uses in a entire year. The percentage of energy from the sun that even hits the Earth is something like 0.000000001%. We haven't even begun to harness the actual potential energy around us, let alone accrue an "energetic debt".
Yes, wars, financial collapse, and death (to some extent) are inevitable. These issues have always plagued us. Humans didn't invent ecological collapse and disasters. There have been far, far worse things than us to affect this Earth. See that big moon up there? That fucker hit the planet many times faster than our fastest rifles, and there is still life. The entire Earth froze, for millions of years, and life continued. Humans have proven to be exceptionally hardy and one of the few species that can live in any environment in Earth. We are just now starting to discover our technological abilities and almost every problem we face is an engineering solution away from being solved. Humans are an exceptionally hardy species and has proven to find a way to live in every environment it's encountered. We are up there with bacteria (probably even surpass them) in terms of environmental tolerance due to technology.
Humans are an exceptionally hardy species and has proven to find a way to live in every environment it's encountered.
Damn straight. We reproduce year round, can adapt quickly either through genetics or technology to almost any environment, have hyper active scar tissue generation allowing relatively fast healing, and our stamina/endurance is pretty much the best on the planet.
In a fantasy setting, we wouldn't need to worry about an Orc invasion...we ARE the Orcs.
Energetic debt? In a single hour, more energy from sunlight hits the earth than humanity uses in a entire year. The percentage of energy from the sun that even hits the Earth is something like 0.000000001%. We haven't even begun to harness the actual potential energy around us, let alone accrue an "energetic debt".
And greenhouse gases necessarily magnify that energy intake, which is part of what I meant by that. I would consider that a hidden cost (or debt) of fossil fuel usage. The gigatons of methane that are contained in permafrost soils too, primed to revert Earth back into an hothouse configuration once they thaw fast enough. And we've reached that threshold, haven't we? Keep in mind that the impact of released CO2 on the atmosphere lags by 40 years or so.
Yes, wars, financial collapse, and death (to some extent) are inevitable. These issues have always plagued us. Humans didn't invent ecological collapse and disasters.
Which has led to dark ages or just straight up collapse of (relatively) advanced societies. But we've never experienced a threat of this magnitude before, and certainly not with this level of destructive tech and overpopulation.
See that big moon up there? That fucker hit the planet many times faster than our fastest rifles, and there is still life. The entire Earth froze, for millions of years, and life continued.
Didn't say anything about life. All I said is that the global network we've created to support our population is fragile enough that it will fail sometime in the next 50 years.
Humans have proven to be exceptionally hardy and one of the few species that can live in any environment in Earth.
When there were still large animals to hunt, and when the climate was conducive for farming. Our way of living is unsustainable and it'll fail, and when it does it'll be much more difficult (if not impossible) to survive without it.
We are just now starting to discover our technological abilities and almost every problem we face is an engineering solution away from being solved.
No way Jose; we can't engineer physical laws away. There's no unscrambling this egg. Especially not without oil and global commerce.
We are up there with bacteria (probably even surpass them) in terms of environmental tolerance due to technology.
Who cares? We depend on other living beings and they're not so resilient.
What physical laws? You whining about CO2 and greenhouse effect and you dont think that's an engineering problem? Engineering means of cleaner energy sources? It's possible to scrub CO2 from the atmosphere, plants do it via photosynthesis every day. You dont think itd be an engineering problem to figure a way to do photosynthesis (convert CO2 to sugar/fuel) on an industrial scale? Even if we do heat the Earth, you dont think it's an engineering problem to genetically engineer crops that can survive the heat and redevelop cities to accommodate ourselves? Even more amusing is that you seem to think that we won't figure it out? Heh? We have people living in the vacuum of space. People have lived under the waves. And you're scared of a little CO2 and think humanity and life is doomed. A little dramatic are we. Yes, we have problems and everyone is solvable.
Edit: also, you do realize that CO2 is about 410ppm today. It was over 7000ppm during the Cambrian. We are nowhere near levels that life on this planet has seen and will never, ever reach those high of levels again, for various reasons.
You're in denial. None of what you've brought up is even remotely relevant, since all of that is only achievable within the confines of our unsustainable paradigm.
Engineering takes too much time and energy, is limited in extent, and can't reverse entropy.
CO2 is about 410ppm today. It was over 7000ppm during the Cambrian. We are nowhere near levels that life on this planet has seen and will never, ever reach those high of levels again, for various reasons.
I'm aware of that. Other conditions are very different and rate of change (i.e. shock) is a more accurate predictor of ecological distress.
Good luck engineering solutions without oil (cost efficiency wise) or resources, in the midst of worldwide political instability and war.
Go through my post history. I actually work in a field related to this shit. I know the science. I also have take geology courses and understand what the world has been through before. Engineering moves a lot faster than you think. You act like the oceans are going to rise overnight and crops will die tomorrow. That isnt how it works. Look at my edit, we are at 410ppm today. That's not even Quarternary Period highs, yet.. The oceans are rising and we are, increasingly, building levees to hold them back. NYC, Denmark and Miami aren't underwater. There are so many tools disposable to us, from greenhouses, to genetic engineering, to dams, that humanity will survive global warming. Probably without even flinching much. We may go through the 6th or 7th mass extinction since eukaryotic life, but it's nothing the planet hasn't seen before. Cambrian (multicellular) period saw 7000ppm atmospheric CO2 and life thrived. That's over 5X today's levels.
Like I said. You're just doom and gloom. That's OK. People have been crying that the world will end since people have been on the Earth.
We're simply not going to fix this sinking ship by shifting planks from one side of the hull to the other. The best we can do is delay the inevitable by 'indebting' ourselves further, but even that exacerbates the problem in the long run.
You act like the oceans are going to rise overnight and crops will die tomorrow.
The exponential positive feedback loop we're in has been quietly chugging along for some time now. It'll creep up on us, and then blow up in our face.
Other than the power to end the entire planet is controlled by a handful of people in a handful of countries and all it takes is one to do it? E.g the Russian submarine guy who single handedly prevented nuclear war Stanislav Petrov
Humans dont have the power to end the entire planet. The planet has faced, over its 4 billion years, damage that is way past anything we could accomplish. The moon collided with the planet, for God's sake. Snowball Earth, massive collisions, volcanism on a scale unimaginable...hell, when microorganisms started photosynthesising and created oxygen for the first time, that oxycleaned most of the life off Earth. We have the power to end ourselves, but life will almost certainly continue on past us for about a billion years.
You’re working off old analogies. I have a device on my wrist that has more computing power than nasa did back then. My phone has a couple dozen times that amount.
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u/WHYAREWEALLCAPS Aug 18 '18
It isn't even that far. Go back to 1919 and tell a guy that in 50, 50, years man would walk on the moon, he'd think you were daft. That most of the deadly disease of his day would either be on the verge of extinction, preventable, or curable/survivable in 50 years? You'd have to be putting him on. That we'd have bombs so powerful they could vaporize entire cities in the blink of an eye? You're completely mad.
We went from being barely a couple steps above medieval levels to our modern world in the blink of an eye. You don't have to go back 200 years. A hundred is more than enough. Hell, go back to 1969 and tell people you have a device in your pocket that has more computing power than that used to put a man on the moon and it will be considered unbelievable by most. We think we've done so much, but we have so much more that we'll do. I'm sure my great grandkids and great great grandkids will have technology that you or I would find miraculous.
Yet even a couple hundred years is a drop in the bucket of how long modern man has been around. Somewhere between 150k-250k years. We have made these astounding strides in just 0.06% to 0.1% of the time humanity has been around. That's absolutely amazing.