The Future of Earth and Beyond!

[Asuras]

We all know resources only go so far for the Earth, and rising populations will inevitably require human expansion, but how far can we push the Earth before it pushes back? Is space the only answer? Can we co-exist peacefully with nature without limiting our own growth? How will energy needs affect our society?

Thread for the discussion of humanities existence on Earth and how our future will impact it, and what the Earth will demand from us, as well as the potential of space travel and what it will do for us, and require from us.

[Frenchie]

I think that inevitably, we will look for other horizons. However. Overpopulation is not going to be what drives us to do it. Resource harvesting, yes. Overpopulation, no, absolutely not.

[synaesthetic]

Originally Posted by Frenchie

I think that inevitably, we will look for other horizons. However. Overpopulation is not going to be what drives us to do it. Resource harvesting, yes. Overpopulation, no, absolutely not.

It's interesting to note that population will plateau when available resources plateau. You don't need huge population-destroying wars to make this happen. Population growth naturally stabilizes based on the amount of available resources.

Animals do this all the time. You'll note that in areas where resources are scarce, the population is low. Animals don't fight destructive wars to keep their numbers within the limits of the available resources.

I think space development is the only natural solution to many human problems. We're growing up. We're approaching the age where it's time to leave the nest. I've heard many arguments on the virtues for staying here and solving the problems of now, but what ever got done by remaining stagnated in the present, or worse, mired in the past?

Humanity only advances by looking toward the future. I will not allow myself to become mired in the here and now--I always look toward my own personal future. What I will do, what I will become, what I can make of myself. I do not allow myself to become content, comfortable in stagnation.

It's human nature to always want more no matter how much we have. It's important not to let that ambition lead to unchecked avarice, but it's also important not to let that ambition die out completely.

[DonQuigleone]

I said it in another thread, but we can also go down.

[synaesthetic]

Good luck fighting the enviro-nuts on that one. Remember what happened in the Gulf? Those BP assholes and their negligence basically deep-sixed any chance for major undersea mining or drilling operations...

[Ithekro]

The Ocean down is possible...Earth down is not so much. We can only do down so far before the heat of the Mantle gets to the point we can't survive. They started running into these problems in South Africa as they dug more deeply for diamonds. Add to this the need for sunlight for produce and livestock. (We could dig to greedily and too deeply and all that).

[Mr Hat and Clogs]

(Moved this from that other thread.)

I'm all for expanding into space (which would be a ridiculous resource drain initially in itself with a good chance of little return) or heading into the oceans, deep ocean. There are resources down there ie geothermal vents and its a hell-a-va lot closer then say, mars. The moon really would be just a staging platform for going further into space, and a source for ore/minerals. Planet wise, only mars could have a realistic chance at sustaining human life on its surface without needing radical changes. Other planets are far too hostile like Venus and Uranus (is it Neptune or Uranus that has landmass with oceans of methane?) or no land mass like Jupiter at which point you'd be stuck on moons again or space stations. There is also the effects space has on the human body ie muscular atrophy and even on the smaller planetoids you would suffer from this almost as much as a space station.

The problem with any of these is governments and other controlling bodies is that they often only have their own 'immediate' interests at heart. It's pretty rare that any of those sorts of entities look more then a 100 years ahead - and it's very rarely publicised since generally the public/customers/share holders what something tangible right away. Sure we get the odd show of progress, but if we ever want any 'real' progress we as a species would need the motivation and unfortunately it might get to the point where its too late.

Only thing that will really dent the human race will be some extinction level event, such as an asteroid, gamma burst, massive volcanic activity or plague. All of which aren't that predictable.

Fan of the asteroid one myself, also cyberpunk.

[C.A.]

If humans are to survive, they must expand to space and not just the solar system but beyond it.

Humans are currently at a crucial point before becoming a full Type 1 Civilisation, we need to be able to unite society and technology together. Get rid of useless wars and conflicts, understand that survival depends on technology and exploration in space and not be stuck with on Earth with selfish personal desires.

So actually Gundam 00 is showing exactly what humans need to do to become a Type 1 Civilisation with the help of Deux Ex Machina GN Particles.

[FateAnomaly]

Mankind is already polluting Earth enough as it is. Before they start venturing out to space, they should learn to control their selfish and destructive tendencies. If they can't do that, i think its better if they just stay rooted down.

[Mr Hat and Clogs]

Getting rid of war/conflict will be almost impossible, without some unifying event. Even then you'd still have fanatics. Pessimistically speaking we'd either have to claw our way back up from some spectacular world wide disaster with a unified government, or someone would have to be the dominant unquestionable global power through other means. Both of which aren't mutually exclusive.

Optimistically, if you want to go to another planet you'd have to get agencies from all over the planet involved and get their governments to actively inject resources. Problem is what do they get in return, unless it was some sort of global exodus (ie Homeworld 1), each government would want a stake in whats out their in the form of territory and resources (and we end up with something that looks like the Inner Sphere).

Besides still doesn't resolve the stupendous travel times. It'd be awesome to travel FTL, but we'd probably have a better chance with wormholes, natural or man-made (lols). Taking years (decades) to travel between stars just isn't all that feasible. Who knows maybe the LHC will be what gets us the ability to travel huge distances in a sane time frame with these particles that can travel through time. Maybe get a ship that can side step time to get somewhere 'instantly'.

[RandySyler]

If you want a unifying event it would need to be either...
A). A One World Government that, well, governs the world. This idea falls to heavy resistance from conspiracies and nationalists who either don't want to their country to be "assimilated" or view the OWG as evil. Also, a unified government would need to be highly Authoritarian, which is going backwards in human social evolution, or face heavy corruption and desertion from rebellious nationalists or OWG politicians. Not to mention the extreme amount of political corruption that would happen within the government, and the hereditary rule that would ensue. So this isn't such a great solution.

B). Aliens invade, and threaten to wipe us out. Certainly unifying, but unlikely and mired with the fact that even if we defeated the aliens, we would go back to our differences. Maybe not as bad, but still not effective (or possible!) at all. So this isn't too great.

C). Probably the one thing that is the best and most likely cause for unification would be after we grasp inter-star system (Doesn't sound as cool as inter-galactic but more accurate) and colonize other planets that we unite at least Earth under one government to forward the colonies. This eliminates, for the most part, any political obstruction to colonization of space. Now, this isn't to say that all the colonies will follow the same unification but it'll help to stop Earth-born troubles at least. But if you look historically, when the Americas were being colonized, the European nations didn't unite in the least, so that same parallel can be drawn to future space colonization perhaps.

[Tiberium Wolf]

My take on this issue goes with George Carlin

Earth is and will be fine. We are fucked.

[Mr Hat and Clogs]

That last point is kinda what I was getting at with the Inner Sphere reference. There was a book series I read called Saga of the Seven Suns, not the best series but quite enjoyable, which had a pretty interesting setup. Earth was over crowded, so they built 'generation' ships to travel to other worlds. To cut a long story short they meet aliens who have interstellar travel and eventually earthlings colonise other planets and earth starts to lose its place as the centre of humanity because it starts to lose control of the resource flow (disregarding all the other stuff that happens).

Anyway my point being, if you could somehow get each planet in our system colonised they may very well end up with each planet having a single government. Saying this because they will rely on earth for resources initially, and due to the nature and cost of travel it would be beneficial and smart that everything/one goes together. Once there are, say, 8 other planetary governments that can stand on their own it may well force earth to follow suit. But it may well also be that each of those other colonies break up into countries. The difference is that planetary expansion would be a lot slower then it was on earth and a lot more regulated.

Corruption is pretty much unavoidable I think, you'd have to have some serious checks and balances in place. For example in the above mentioned series, its a massive corporation called the Terran Hanseatic league, which was based up the real Hanseatic League that controls everything human related and its quite authoritarian and corrupt.

I'm Australian, not American, but our countries are similar in size and have a similar system insofar that we have states with an overarching federal system, which could be used as very loose framework for colonising our solar system, ie: one currency, same laws, etc. But it still comes down to its sheer scale, at the start it might not be too bad but give it a couple generations. What happens if earth favors one planet over the other for resources or something like that.

It'd be impossible to keep it all working fine and dandy for too long I think, unless expansion was slow, controlled and consistent.

[Ithekro]

Assuming (if it was profitable) that countries of today wouldn't try to colonize areas on their own. Or would they all be corperate ventures, thus taking the nations out of the picture entirely.

There is a sort of way to make a World government, but it would require getting though the rather thick nationist ideals of the first world countries first. After that point you simple close trade to those that don't want to join, and those that do join get heavy infrustructure uplifting (sort of what the EU is doing to say Greece and Spain). If those outside start causing trouble, blockade them in. Nothing goes in and nothing comes out. And not the thin blockades, but a hard blockade. You might not be at the point of shooting them, but anything that comes over the border gets politely escorted home.

[synaesthetic]

Originally Posted by FateAnomaly

Mankind is already polluting Earth enough as it is. Before they start venturing out to space, they should learn to control their selfish and destructive tendencies. If they can't do that, i think its better if they just stay rooted down.

I hear this argument constantly whenever I bring up space development, and it's utter crap. "Selfish, destructive tendencies" are what put us on the top of the pile. We're going to need to keep that same level of tenacious stubbornness, that ambition and drive to succeed in the face of adversity if we want to ever amount to anything at all.

Ass doesn't kick itself, you know.

[Sides]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

It's interesting to note that population will plateau when available resources plateau. You don't need huge population-destroying wars to make this happen. Population growth naturally stabilizes based on the amount of available resources.

Animals do this all the time. You'll note that in areas where resources are scarce, the population is low. Animals don't fight destructive wars to keep their numbers within the limits of the available resources.

Although we are also animals, in a sense, unlike them we do not have natural predators to keep our numbers in check. Furthermore, we have the ability to change or manipulate our environment. Do you really think that the human population will stabilise itself without our own intervention?
At the moment we are keeping the population numbers in african nations, and probably others, in check, by not giving them the same treatment that we have. Once we open the door for equal trade, the whole world can go BOOM.

[Aqua Knight]

Originally Posted by C.A.

If humans are to survive, they must expand to space and not just the solar system but beyond it.

Humans are currently at a crucial point before becoming a full Type 1 Civilisation, we need to be able to unite society and technology together. Get rid of useless wars and conflicts, understand that survival depends on technology and exploration in space and not be stuck with on Earth with selfish personal desires.

So actually Gundam 00 is showing exactly what humans need to do to become a Type 1 Civilisation with the help of Deux Ex Machina GN Particles.

Totally agreed

I think some people might take Char's idea of make cleansing earth by dropping an asteroid

Though I agree with Char on this idea.

[Ithekro]

Foos supplies and living space will dictate terms to the humans. Also if global air quality goes down there will be another factor that will remove people. If we can't sustain ourselves, people start dying due to starvation and other problems. We might try to complensate for it, but there is only so much techology can do at this point. At some point we will stop overbreeding, and those areas that don't will start dying in greater numbers so that others might live. I half expect the third world to implode if we get to that point. That or they will mass immigrate to the first world and problems will happen (again). They might overwhelm the first world nations that aren't breeding as much and thus the first world will die out and leave the world to the other nations that develope later...but the damage will only have been done since the population will be at "peak" levels.

However, balance will happen...one way or another...unless we manage to increase the capacity of the planet.

[DonQuigleone]

I'm all for colonizing outerspace, but I think we can equally dig deeper into the ground.

The heat issue was mentioned earlier, and that is certainly to be considered, unless we use mining robots. We're likely going to do most space development via robots as well, so we may as well get on track to making good ones. It shouldn't be too hard given the amount of automated machinery we already possess.

Also, mining for stuff besides oil wouldn't have too many environmental threats.

And on the ocean front, 7/10 of the earth's surface is still unused. 2 things we can do is:

1. build floating farms, just float a some soil, or a hydroponic system over the sea. Storms would be the major difficulty.

2. Drain the sea from continental shelves. Some regions this would be very effective at creating more land, particularly the north sea which has an average depth of 95 metres, and a max depth of 700. One could build a dyke between scotland, Shetlands and norway, and between Dover and Calais to block the english channel, and drain it.

There may be other good candidates, like the yellow sea (mean depth of 44 metres) or the sea of Japan (at the points joining with the outside a depth of only 100 metres, but otherwise 1700). The gulf of St. Lawrence and the Gulf of mexico may also be good candidates.

Sea's like the mediterranean are poor candidates, despite the small nature of the straits of Gibraltar, as it's quite deep, and the mediterranean may have more value as a sea then as land.

I'd say it would cost as much to drain certain continental shelfs as to do extensive colonisation in space, though the political points would be difficult.

[GundamFan0083]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

I hear this argument constantly whenever I bring up space development, and it's utter crap. "Selfish, destructive tendencies" are what put us on the top of the pile. We're going to need to keep that same level of tenacious stubbornness, that ambition and drive to succeed in the face of adversity if we want to ever amount to anything at all.

Ass doesn't kick itself, you know.

QFT.

Virtue is not what will drive mankind into space.
Looking back on the history of our species it's easy to see that we humans have expanded over the face of the Earth in order to conquer it.
In my opinion the same driving force of "Greed" will send us into the solar system if not the stars.
And like many times previously, it will be a joint government-corporate venture in order to exploit the resources of the new lands.
Syn, you are absolutely correct that the idea that space-exploration/exploitation is "too expensive" is utter nonsense.
In 2008 the world's countries spent only 62 billion dollars collectively on space. That's a fraction of what they spend on military systems and entitlement programs.
If we could ever get hold of our governments and reign them in, I think that a joint space program with hundreds of billions (perhaps even trillions) of dollars behind it globally could help jump-start "baby-step" space projects like a space-elevator, world-wide orbital solar collection system, space stations, and a base or two on Luna.
The long-term returns would far outweigh the short term cost.
William James (a philosopher of pragmatism) once speculated on a viable alternative to war, he said it had to have the same level of danger, waste/cost, and measure of emotional return.
I think the conquest of space is the only viable substitute for war that we as a species have before us.