[X] My Assistant

[Bob Shaw]

That is bull!!! It is only true if the GDP is not wasted on Marketing Consultants, Dog shampoo, Interior designers and Breast enhancements. We should build a spaceship and send them off to colonise another planet just like in the Hitchhikers Guide. A lot of the GDP and hence energy consumption in developed Western societies is an indulgent waste. The plastic wrappers that wrap your individual choc bar before it goes into the cardboard wrapper before it goes into the cardboard box are all part of this GDP. Even Lawyers are part of the GDP

Personally, I've always felt that, er, 'enhancements' are a necessity rather than a luxury. I could be wrong. OUCH!

Bob Shaw (Ouch! OUCH! O U C H !)

[abalone]

Personally, I've always felt that, er, 'enhancements' are a necessity rather than a luxury. I could be wrong.  OUCH!

Bob Shaw (Ouch! OUCH! O U C H !)

Bob, admire the mind. You dont need 'enhancements'

[Toma B]

So is there any hope or not???

I gues Agent Smith (The Matrix) was right...

Agent Smith: I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed.

The only way you can survive is to spread to another area.

There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus...

But we don't have enough time to spread to new areas...

---How can this be posible----
---Politicians should be addresing this isue...but they are not...WHY???

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

---Politicians should be addresing this isue...but they are not...WHY???

because WE vote for guies whom only skill is to make nice speeches. Apologize, it is not their fault.

[Toma B]

Some more bad news!!!

Climate warning as Siberia melts

Is there anybody who thinks there is way out of these "Peak Oil" , "Global warming" , "Polution" problems???

Is there any hope????

[abalone]

Some more bad news!!!

Climate warning as Siberia melts

Is there anybody who thinks there is way out of these "Peak Oil" , "Global warming" , "Polution" problems???

Is there any hope????

Depressing

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Depressing

Depressing, but it is reality. If we do nothing today to change our head in the sand policies, what will come in 10-20 years will be much more than depressing.

It is not unmannedspaceflight which will come with a solution, but discussing it everywhere is really important: we all have some bits of means to change things.

Me I think that questionning all our policies to avoid a woldwide lethal threat is not depressing, it is rather challenging. What depresses me is people who do nothing, fatalism, submission, being unconcerned and self-centered, all of them losers even before attempting. Wake up! Our Earth spaceship is on fire!

Doug, could you please add a smilie showing a boot kicking an a... ?

[abalone]

Depressing, but it is reality. If we do nothing today to change our head in the sand policies,  ...

I have planted a mango tree recently and they are marginal here, does that count?

[Marcel]

Is there any hope????

Dutch saying: NO HOPE, NO LIFE:

I think there's hope. The day will come, that there will be an equilibrium between crop production worldwide and the amount of stomachs walking around. Diseases, wars, famines, natural disasters, etc. will (in the end) take care of that. Given that fact (that world population isn't growing well above mother earths carrying capacity), the energy problem is the only one problem left by then. And this can be solved.

Stronger: it can't be anything else. First: We life on a globe that's heated from the outside with a wealth of readily available radiation that can be converted in any other form we like (heat, chemically in the form of hydrogen, etc.). Secondly, this globe has an incredibly thin crust, under which it boils of superhot rock. Imagine: on a lot of places on earth, we burn fossil fuels like crazy, while just a little deeper than the sources of these fuels, the earth is red hot ! In the end, we must use it, simply because there will be no alternative left. Yeah, death of a lot of people probably at first (but probably gradualy due to demographic changes over centuries). But this will come to an equilibrium. And then: using absolute 100 % sustainable energy sources (solar energy in any form: wind and tide energy are solar energy as well) will be the only way to go.

But right now: it is much easier to drill a hole, let the oil come out and burn it (according to what is actually happening). It's easier and cheaper right now than developping new tech for sustainable resources. It's politics, it's fast profit for the big oil companies and national economies, compared to making costs for new hardware/infrastructure in the direction of sustainability. There's one "but": we should not forget to use this natural sources of fossil fuels to go through a transition phase to sustainable sources: we need the oil to stay alive right now and devellop into the right direction.

But i am afraid, that it's going to take an awfull lot of time, damage to the environment and frustration. But in the end.....it will be "fine" i'd say.

Conclusion: i don't think humanity will kill itself completely by using up all resources, before it devellopped a new, sustainable way of converting solar energy for era's....

Statement: In 10000 years, there will still be humans around (but no elephants, whales or any other mamals bigger than a cat).

[Borek]

This is a "boiling frog" scenario as our whole economy gets knocked off sector-by-sector by rising energy costs until we're back to a 19th century technology riding on steam trains (which can burn wood) and sail boats.

No need to go steam engines, today we have electricity. I commute every day over 55 miles one way (110 miles there and back again) and I am in electricity-powered vehicles all along the way (trolley-bus in one city, electric train, then streetcar on the other city).

Borek

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

No need to go steam engines, today we have electricity. I commute every day over 55 miles one way (110 miles there and back again) and I am in electricity-powered vehicles all along the way (trolley-bus in one city, electric train, then streetcar on the other city).

Borek

Electricity is not an energy source. Without energy source, the power grid just gets off. And to produce this electricity today there are huge... steam machines (coal of fuel power plants) which burn fossil fuel. This is the problem.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Dutch saying: NO HOPE, NO LIFE:

I think there's hope. The day will come, that there will be an equilibrium between crop production worldwide and the amount of stomachs walking around. Diseases, wars, famines, natural disasters, etc. will (in the end) take care of that. Given that fact (that world population isn't growing well above mother earths carrying capacity)...

That depend on our choices. If we do the choice of regulating population, go to renewable resources, etc... this dreadful scenario will not happen, and we shall be able to live happy, without hunger and problems, and achieve many great things. But if we make the choice of lefting things like they are today, certainly some natural selection process will cull mankind out, lefting only a small part of it, perhaps nobody. And lefting no right to complain.

This is started, new diseases are beginning to appear.

Personally I do not know what to do. I planted trees, I was candidates to elections, I put my life at risk, I select my garbage, etc. But how to make others understand?

[ljk4-1]

No matter what else happens to Earth's resources, in a few billion years from now our Sun is going to expand into a red giant star and fry Earth. So we better either move or find a way to keep the Sun burning longer at its current yellow dwarf stage.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

No matter what else happens to Earth's resources, in a few billion years from now our Sun is going to expand into a red giant star and fry Earth.  So we better either move or find a way to keep the Sun burning longer at its current yellow dwarf stage.

Yes, but this is a completelly different issue. It is said that, in one billion years, the Earth will be unable to regulate its natural greenhouse effect to avoid the rise of temperature (Sun will be still on its main sequence, but its temp raises slowly).
But one billion years is a lot of time... we have plenty of time to find a solution for this kind of problem, including shifting Earth's orbit farther from the Sun, to allow three more billions years before the Sun turns to a red giant.

But to achieve the engineering level required to shedule tasks over millions of years, we need a sustainable economy/industry, and a coherent society/politics/morals and the like.

Otherwise, as marcel says above, there will be some kind of natural selection. So far that mankind could disappear, and, in some tens of million years, another specie could become intelligent and do things in our place. They will wonder why we were eliminated, and search for the meteorite impact which eliminated us.

[Toma B]

But to achieve the engineering level required to shedule tasks over millions of years, we need a sustainable economy/industry, and a coherent society/politics/morals and the like.

Someday maybe 100-200 years from now human civilisation may rise again. Without any oil , uranium , natural gas or coal they might find that rather dificult but...
If our grandchildren are to succed in building that new civilisation in that circumstances , then maybe somebody will remember our times as naive period when we were so blind and so happy about it...other will hate us because of what we could do but didn't...