Earth is wobbling and days are getting longer — and humans are to blame

[Unclear Engineer]

Atlan0001,

There is no way for the people on Earth to all get around the collective problems we have here by sending a relative few of us off to space colonies. We need to talk about solving the problems here for the people who will not be leaving here.

And, it takes a very large amount of energy to implement the technology to establish off-world colonies. SpaceX Starships are not made with renewable energy, and are not launched by solar power.

Even if sending the relative few to space colonies could provide a remnant population somewhere else if the human species goes extinct on Earth, it is not a good bet that humans could survive elsewhere long-term if they can't survive here.

We need to understand that the problem is us. How we behave is why we have the problems we have. We cannot "fix" the Earth without first fixing ourselves.

It is not clear to me that we can do that. But, I want us to try.

Is the proper definition of "intelligence" the ability to fix oneself?

Is that so hard to do that it explains why we are not seeing "intelligent life civilizations" on planets in the stars around us?

 

[Atlan0001]

Atlan0001,

There is no way for the people on Earth to all get around the collective problems we have here by sending a relative few of us off to space colonies. We need to talk about solving the problems here for the people who will not be leaving here.

And, it takes a very large amount of energy to implement the technology to establish off-world colonies. SpaceX Starships are not made with renewable energy, and are not launched by solar power.

Even if sending the relative few to space colonies could provide a remnant population somewhere else if the human species goes extinct on Earth, it is not a good bet that humans could survive elsewhere long-term if they can't survive here.

We need to understand that the problem is us. How we behave is why we have the problems we have. We cannot "fix" the Earth without first fixing ourselves.

It is not clear to me that we can do that. But, I want us to try.

Is the proper definition of "intelligence" the ability to fix oneself?

Is that so hard to do that it explains why we are not seeing "intelligent life civilizations" on planets in the stars around us?

How very wrong you are!!!! You cannot possibly have the "One World" you speak of and advocate with there being two or more worlds . . . those other worlds, that other world, being the Frontier universe inclusive of the Earth!!!!
---------------------------

"Aim at heaven (the heavens) and you get Earth thrown in. Aim at Earth and you get neither." -- C. S. Lewis, 'The Abolition of Man'

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Atlan0001, You are not making any clear logical argument about how space colonization will improve the lots of those of us staying here on Earth to the extent that it will save us from the problems we have already created for ourselves.

Can you explain your logic for us? Simply quoting conclusions by published authors who probably did not have any specific explanation themselves is not sufficient. Are you simply relying on emotional faith that we will "find a way, somehow, because we always have", or do you actually have some sort of implementable plan in mind?

 

[Atlan0001]

Atlan0001, You are not making any clear logical argument about how space colonization will improve the lots of those of us staying here on Earth to the extent that it will save us from the problems we have already created for ourselves.

Can you explain your logic for us? Simply quoting conclusions by published authors who probably did not have any specific explanation themselves is not sufficient. Are you simply relying on emotional faith that we will "find a way, somehow, because we always have", or do you actually have some sort of implementable plan in mind?

I really hate it when people do not read or study history and have no sense whatsoever of its natural laws and lessons!

IT'S AUTOMATIC FROM THE VERY REAL FRONTIER START OF A VERY REAL FRONTIER BEGINNING OPENING OF AN EXHAUST VALVE AND PIPING FROM AND FOR A COMBUSTION ENGINE OF MANKIND!!!! (Which has not happened at all in the last fifty-one years since the 1973 closing of the space frontier to any true means and road of opening and exhausting!)

 

[Unclear Engineer]

My study of history tells me that people have been making the same types of damaging behaviors for as long as it has been recorded. Looking at the past as a guide to the future is not going to solve the problems that humans have continued to create over our past history. Our drive to expand our population and our reach for more resources to support that drive is running into physical limits.

So, don't tell me to go read history. Tell me how you intend to deal with the limits for the future. Rambling about " infinities" doesn't cut it. If you see some engineered solutions, you need to explain them, because it would require some engineers to actually accomplish them.

Talk is cheap - actually accomplishing something is a lot harder. Not every "good idea" is feasible, or even possible. Only realistic responses to real problems are going to succeed. Jingoism is only distracting, and even counter-productively misleading.

 

[Atlan0001]

The only problem with Mankind and the Earth is the black hole of a totalitarian absolute of enclosed system imprisoning All Mankind! I'm finished trying to make you see that matter of chaos physics you flatly refuse to see (or simply cannot possibly see from a blindness), UE!

I see it! Stephen Hawking saw it! Others see it and have seen it throughout history! You either flatly refuse to see it, or naturally cannot possibly see it! Good bye as far as this thread and its matter is concerned!

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Atlan001, It is not clear what sort of position you are ascribing to me in your own mind, but it seems incorrect. I am not advocating totalitarianism, and I am not opposing space exploration or even colonization.

As for your statement about the "frontier" being "closed" since 1973, I assume you are talking about the last U.S. Apollo mission to the Moon. That is not a realistic representation of history. Nobody "closed" space exploration. At this point, private enterprise companies in the U.S. are working to put people on the Moon and on Mars, as are the Chinese and Indian governments. So, that includes a totalitarian government, two democracies, and some non-government corporations. How much more "open" can that get?

But, how that is going to address the ecological and climate and resource problems here on Earth is what you seem to be unable to explain.

Space based tools will help - in particular Earth-sensing satellites that can tell us what is in the atmosphere and how much of it is coming from specific sources. Going to the Moon and even Mars may help us better understand things about how the Earth really works, too. So, I am not opposed to those efforts at all, and even favor them out of my natural curiosity about things, anyway.

But, I do not see those efforts as solutions to the problems we are discussing in this thread.

 

[Classical Motion]

We’re not going anywhere. This is the only refuge we have. And we have plenty of resources and plenty of energy and plenty of land for plenty of people.

We have everything we need which insures that we will have war. Just for the sake of war.

But we will put lipstick on it and use another reason. Pick anything you want. There are millions of people who have no political power at this time, but with electricity, they will prosper and gain it. If you think there is division now, wait 25 years. Many other cultures will want their say. And remember old wounds. Old injustices.

Human nature is the only problem. And no one is gonna change that.

So much for philosophy. The future always has human nature.

It does not matter what one thinks or feels about climate change. It’s gonna happen and no one will stop it. The wait won’t be long.

We will see the damage it causes. More than likely change will be made only when it has to be.

Not all water seeks it’s own level. The land and the air hold water too. Life too.

I’m guessing it would be much more dangerous if O2 were going up. The corrosion, the waste, the spoilage. Imagine that threat. Big bugs.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I’m guessing it would be much more dangerous if O2 were going up. The corrosion, the waste, the spoilage. Imagine that threat. Big bugs.

Maybe big flying lizards!!! The O2 content of the atmosphere during the periods with the dinosaurs is thought to have averaged around 30% and as high as 35%. See https://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw27.html .

 

[Classical Motion]

Our mucus couldn’t keep up with that level, the O2 would burn our lungs up. After it took the nose.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I am not seeing literature that says O2 partial pressures of 0.3 to 0.35 bar have such drastic effects.

For instance, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity . The graph seems to show only about 2% decrease in "lung vital capacity" for 30 hour exposure at about 0.7 bar, with the curve looking pretty flat with time at that point. And, that is twice what the dinosaurs seemed to have lived with.

Do you have any links to longer term damage at lower O2 partial pressures?

I would expect humans could adapt as fast as the O2 partial pressure increased. A tribe of native Americans in Peru that live at high altitudes have adapted by developing hemoglobin that has rippled surfaces instead of smooth surfaces, to capture more oxygen from the lower O2 partial pressure in their home territory high in the Andes. But, they are exempt from military service in Peru because they can't come down to sea level without getting sick from too much oxygen. Similar to divers having to limit their depths to stay consistent with whatever gas mixture was provided.

 

[spacedweller]

A simple solution for us (not the planet) is to start building homes and industries underground, there won't be as hot as on the surface.

We might as well one day become goblins lol.

 

[Classical Motion]

No, no docs and no knowledge of such. Just going by what friends who use O2 have told me.

 

[Classical Motion]

We have gobs and gobs of prime living area in the north latitudes.

 

[Classical Motion]

And you would be surprised at what an Alaskan garden can give you. Without a green house.

I read a study many decades ago, that one could put every human on earth in Colorado, and give them five acres. The only problem is that those five acres won’t be flat. Only then does one need a hole.

 

[Atlan0001]

Physicist Michio Kaku wrote some years ago that Mankind has increased in its numbers 1-million-fold over the last 2-million years. And that that does not even begin to tell the story of numbers.

Mankind, according to Michio Kaku, has increased in its energies, infrastructure, complexity and reaches, 2-million-fold, average per every man, woman and child living (of 8-billion living) over the same 2-million years . . . more than 1-million-fold of that 2-million-fold increase in energies occurring in just the last 80 years. For the simplest matching, multiply 8-billion x 2-million-fold and come up with the equivalent human presence, the human impact, on Earth (the fully developed in every way, growing and needing and wanting, and, therefore, polluting, child in the womb of Earth (now passing the due time of a birth))!

 

[George²]

Scientists, if something shakes before their eyes, are more likely not to be particularly sober. And it might be wads of money from "green" policies. In any case, I do not see them as unbiased people who take into account all the facts of a meteoro-historical and astronomical nature. When you select only convenient data, you can only reach convenient conclusions.

 

[Atlan0001]

Scientists, if something shakes before their eyes, are more likely not to be particularly sober. And it might be wads of money from "green" policies. In any case, I do not see them as unbiased people who take into account all the facts of a meteoro-historical and astronomical nature. When you select only convenient data, you can only reach convenient conclusions.

To borrow from and paraphrase Helmuth von Moltke: "The threat was thought insignificant, not to say non-existent, the measures to meet it proposed were therefore completely meaningless. A strictly logical conclusion, such as madmen are liable to arrive at after starting from radically wrong premises."

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I read a study many decades ago, that one could put every human on earth in Colorado, and give them five acres.

I don't know who started that, but my calcs tell me that If I tried to put 8 billion people on the 103,718 square miles of land in the State of Colorado, they each would only have 0.0083 acre. That is 361 square feet per person. An 18' x 20' "home".
With no room for roads, gardens, power plants, etc.
Not to mention that some of that land is nearly vertical, and some is desert. I did not include the 376 square miles that are covered by water.

Somehow, they would need to get out of state to pay baseball.

 

[Classical Motion]

Square area is just 2D area. Colorado isn’t flat. The surface area is much greater than the square area.

It’s a square area with a compressed surface. A folded surface. Each person is given 5 acres of that folded surface.

It’s hillbilly area. The skyscraper effect.

 

[George²]

A big problem is when one thinks only in 2D. Although you mentioned that in Colorado, there are many sloping surfaces (which, by the way, gives an actual area larger than a flat projection), it never occurred to you that multi-story housing has been around for millennia. But in general, discussing who said what X years ago is not that important. In fact, we still have many uninhabited or extremely sparsely populated regions on land, and we could populate the shallow parts of the seas and oceans if we didn't have enough land. How easy or difficult it is to populate these regions is not important, for this purely speculative mental gum.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I basically agree that there is room to cram more people onto the planet. That is one of the reasons I doubt that the global population is going to level off at 10 billion and then decline without any effort to make it happen.

If I take the population density of China and extrapolate that to the whole planet's livable surface (doesn't include Antarctica), I get about 20 billion people. If I do that with the population density of India, I get more like 60 billion. But, China is a better basis for extrapolation because it includes deserts and mountains that India does not have much of.

But, what would that mean in terms of CO2 emissions, food production, resource depletion and all the other things that are coming up as problems now? Not to mention whether there would be any undisturbed natural ecosystems left anywhere.

And remember, the vast majority of the 8 billion here now are not living in the lap of luxury. But, they have seen how some of the "rich countries' lifestyles are more desirable than what they have, and they want that too.

So, it isn't a matter of extrapolating from 8 to 20 billion by multiplying current global consumption and emission by a factor of 2.5. It is a matter of multiplying the current per capita emissions for Europe and North America by 20 billion. There is a huge difference between those two extrapolations.

So, space for housing is not the crunch statistic. But space for growing crops, etc. might be. We are currently growing a lot of our food by pumping water out of deep aquifers that is not replaced by rainfall. That won't last forever. If we have to rely only on rainfall, we might be hard pressed to reliably feed 20 billion people, especially if the climate gets fickle about how much rain and where it becomes available each year. California is already having problems - in fact, the whole Colorado River Basin is having problems, and California is currently pumping some water out of that basin for use in its other areas.

 

[Helio]

I basically agree that there is room to cram more people onto the planet. That is one of the reasons I doubt that the global population is going to level off at 10 billion and then decline without any effort to make it happen.

Yes. If we look at the more recent birth rates for places like Europe, China and the US, you will see that their population can only decrease. This doesn't require mandates, though China used them. Stress is only one reason people have fewer kids.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

If you look more closely at the population reproduction data, you see that it is the middle class that is not reproducing at replacement rates in Europe and North America. That seems to be a result of stress.

However, the "poor" in the same locations are reproducing at more than the replacement rate. At this point in the U.S. that still would not being creating a stable total population. But, when you also account for in-migration, the total population is rising, and not that slowly, either. And, most of the current in-migration in the U.S. is poor people from less developed countries seeking better opportunities to make money and become more prosperous, rather than refugees from wars. Many are actually leaving families in their countries of origin and sending them money they earn from working in the U.S. The birth rates in the areas feeding the in-migration are above replacement rates.

So, what you are really seeing is that poor people are continuing to increase population, while well off people are not. That really does not bode well for global total population dynamics. It is too much easier to make babies than it is to make children into prosperous adults.

 

[Classical Motion]

I think the economists or who ever studies this stuff (showing you how much I know) are all wrong about future predictions.

When electric was first introduced, people really only had a couple of uses for it. It was easy to electrify large areas and meet demand as it grew.

When India and China (or any 3rd world) start spreading juice, the demand is going to be enormous. They will not only know, but will expect great things from it. Lot’s of things. Like a modern life.

A historic demand. A huge coal supply train demand. Probably decades of construction to generate and satisfy.

The demand in five years will be higher than expected. 10 years much higher. It’s addictive.

It will be hard enough for fossil fuel to meet, let alone replacing it. World wide energy price will rise, possibly even black markets. The price of energy snubs any progress or solutions. And causes more conflicts and accusations.

A self tightening noose. A future fester.