The World in 2100: Ten Billion People, No Oil and Not Enough Food

When Neil Tyson came to UH to give a speech a few months ago he had a huge segment on how bad we are at predicting the future, I'd say this is a good example of that.

 

Otto, that journal entry was a great read. So far away on many points yet we are so far past on others. Free education?!! Please the burden of paying for an education is a huge worry and a source of financial enslavement by the banking and government entities.

 

Ok, first, they were telling us this same crap in 1970 about the population. I want to know how many of the people screaming about taking drastic steps had multiple kids and grandkids.

Second, catastrophic manmade global warming is crap.
a) It's all based on models
b) The models have failed at predicting anything, they don't model clouds well or the sun at all, and they assume that everything is a positive feedback.
c) The earth has been warmer than it is now in the current interglacial. We didn't experience runaway global warming then with much higher levels of carbon dioxide.
d) We've seen about 0.8° C of warming since 1850. I would take several more degrees happily - it would massively increase available farmland in Canada and Russia, where the growing season is too short for most of the landmass.
e) Despite increasing carbon dioxide levels, we haven't seen global warming for the last 10 years.
f) Carbon dioxide is NOT a POLLUTANT! It's a gas, and plant food. Plants are much more productive with more CO2 - and they can survive with less water in such an environment. (The Sahel is actually becoming greener lately)
g) Dangerous ocean rise is pure bunkum. The ocean had been rising by about 3 mm per year. (According to the warmists). That rise has decelerated lately. 3mm per year is about a yard in 300 years. All the scare depends on positive feedbacks.
h) Greenland's ice cap isn't going to melt in your lifetime - it's been around for 300,000 years.
i) Ocean acidification is crap as well. The ocean is alkaline. It's true that the ocean can absorb CO2 - but it's also true that as it warms, it releases CO2.
j) If warm water was so bad for reefs, why are all the coral reefs in warm places? The biggest reef and fish kill recently was last winter's freeze in Florida. It killed a lot of coral (and manatees).
k) Be afraid of cold not warmth. Warmth has always been good for humanity. Even the AGW folks will tell you that they expect more warming in the arctic than the tropics. Cold kills - and it's going to kill some old people in Britain this year because their govt raised energy taxes and they can't afford to heat their homes.

3) We have approximately a 600 year supply of coal, massive amounts of shale oil, and we are just starting to develop methrates and clathrates for energy. We're not running out of fossil fuels any time soon.

4) Oh, and don't worry about the population thing. War or disease will probably take care of that if it gets too bad.

5) Don't get me wrong - this is probably the most prosperous we will ever be. Enjoy it while you can.

CN: AGW is pseudoscientific claptrap produced by scientists looking for grant money and politicians looking for new taxes and ways to control your life.

 

stop intercourse. problem solved

 

That's how I get my foodstamps.

 

There are already too many people on Earth, so things are only going to get worse, and worse, and worse, and worse.

 

The 3rd world has to somehow find a way to break with cultural tradition and stop having 50 kids per family.

 

Bring on the Death Panels

 

Abstinence Education??? It seems really effective.:grin:

 

Many parts of Europe already do not have enough kids to replace population. The US barely has enough kids for to replace population.
The key is modernization and economic development. The more modern and developed your country is, the less kids you have.

 

Paging B-Bob..

 

Whoa there motha****er!!!!!!!!!!

 

A little praying should do the trick.

 

Only Tyson would waste a huge segment of his limited time on explaining why we are bad at predicting the future -- I'm guessing at least 2/3rds of the time ensured he came across as smug.

You don't have to spend a lot of time thinking about the earth's population to know that adding a billion people every decade is not a positive development.

 

Fixed

 

If, you just somewhat efficiently used the solar energy that falls on the Earth every day to: desalinate water, grow plants and recycle human waste .... you could support A LOT of human beings on this planet. Don't know if you'd want to, but just on an energy budget and salt water availability, it could be huge number. They might sit hot and naked in the shade of a giant hydroponic farm all day till it's time to drink the green goo and poo the brown poo but, hundreds of billions?

http://www.desertec.org/downloads/deserts_en.pdf

(should be an easy google but I really didn't see it)

 

Sounds very Mathusian. And, hindsight being 20/20, we can see that he was completely incorrect. The author is making the assumption that we wont develop new technologies to alleviate the major concerns he lists. What if we can find a means of reducing transportation costs to near zero? Do we still need to live and work in cities at that point? What if we develop new agricultural systems to increase our yields and reduce waste? Perhaps we'll start using the moon as a giant agricultural colony. That's why Mathus was wrong. He didn't consider how we'd adapt to the new problems that increased trade and industry was beginning to cause in his time. The same applies today.

 

Nothing moves but the solar powered pipelines. Seawater in, heated to steam, generates electricity for pumps, the steam condenses.... up the mountain, the fresh water runs to the desert, glass container farms grow plant proteins, open the spigot. Drop a duce, it goes over to the treatment plant then back in the glass tube.

The salt in the condensation is a disposal issue. If you can get it to a natural salt lake, salt bed or salt cavern your good.The ocean is your limiting quantity, or the life of the sun.

If you want to be add some happy sparkle, everyone is wired up to everything, all day is virtual except the sex.

nothin' to kill or die for
brotherhood of ma-an