[ExI] Oil will never run out

[Samantha Atkins]

On Jun 29, 2008, at 12:41 PM, hkhenson wrote:

> At 10:23 PM 6/28/2008, spike wrote:
>
> snip
>
>> Thanks for pointing this out Keith.  The next few years will surely  
>> give the
>> masses a hard education in physics and engineering.
>
> It is very likely the masses (and us too) will experience hard times  
> over the next few decades.  It might get as bad as 100 million a  
> year starving.  A few decades of that will reduce the size of the  
> problem engineers need to solve.  :-(  On the other hand, it's  
> partly the fault of the engineers and other science types that we  
> have the huge and hard to sustain populations.

I presume you mean 100 million starving in 1st world nations as many,  
many more than that starve today worldwide.   There are means to make  
starvation less likely including vertical farming in urban areas, and  
algae and fish farming.  Part of starvation is wasting a lot of grain  
feeding cattle and adding a lot of cost to transport food large  
distances.  By going to a less cattle intensive diet and finding means  
to produce much of what is consumed locally the problem could be  
decreased in dire consequences.

What we cannot and will not do is be sanguine about mass die-offs.    
Of course we (as a species, nothing personal)  usually are as long as  
the dying is somewhere else.    I have heard too many educated and  
generally caring people banter the notion that the world would be  
better off with around 90% less people.   They entertain this notion  
without admitting the horrors of getting there and while they insist  
they are not promoting mass death.

- samantha