[ExI] Apocalypse Soon: Has Civilization Passed the Environmental Point of No Return?

[Eugen Leitl]

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 11:23:18AM -0400, David Lubkin wrote:
> As was noted when the original Limits to Growth study came out,
> the core fallacy is that they assume we're a closed system.
> Ironic for a book that's come out just after the Planetary Resources
> announcement.

Well, announcements are cheap. And of course Earth is a finite
system, and transport away from here is really hard and produces a
very large, negative impact for each unit of mass transported. 

Transport to down here is (that is, would be) cleaner, but
you're still operating with a damaged, crashing ecosystem and
a human host population reacting to added resources just as
ideal gas. Nevermind that we can't produce metric jack squat 
outside of this gravity well yet -- and we don't have a lot of
time to learn how.

So, if you want us to become a space-faring species, the
window of opportunity is closing fast. Denial would seem
to prevent whatever adaptive strategy change we could
muster.

> We don't need to live within "planetary limits" any more than a
> lifeboat in a freshwater lake has to ration food and water. There's

Well, space is empty. The next island is 1.3 lightseconds away.
You will need these resources to bootstrap anything.
It's a long long way from there to here.

> all you need once you get past thinking the boat is all there is to
> the world.
>
> Meadows and Randers remind me of those apocalyptans who
> keep revising the date on their sign for when the Earth will end
> when it doesn't on schedule.

How about these apocalyptants currently dwelling at the Horn of
Africa? I'm thinking, their nightmares are awfully close to the
truth. What about Nigeria? What could happen there next could make
Rwanda in 1994 look like infinitesimal beer.

> The part I find most depressing is how often earnest, trumpeting
> prognosticators (in whatever sphere) who were wrong before
> are listened to as if their past failures hadn't occurred.

If you have trouble with their methodology, it should be pretty
easy to publish your objections in a peer-reviewed journal.

E.g. look at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/pdf/nature11018.pdf

Think they're full of shit? Write a letter to the editor.

> (It doesn't seem to matter what the topic they were wrong about
> is. If X is elected, it will be the last election the country will know.
> It is impossible to build reliable software of more than Y lines of
> code. The country will have no fresh water after year Z.)