krie
krie on Hacker News
You're not even able to moderate yourself to "could" be astounding, it WILL be astounding, categorically? Is there anything pointing toward such being able to reach fruition? Not really.
I get it. Still annoying that I'm reduced to a simple "Malthusian" for espousing that resource depletion is a problem that's insurmountably difficult to "solve".
Except, the population in the first world will be hit as well. Do you think 315 million Americans makes the USA not overpopulated?
I think it's interesting to discuss it here, the zenith of technocopian optimism and futurism. There's a host of intelligent people frequenting Hacker News, but few have any idea what sort of trouble we are in. No conscious thought at all about the value chain that's involved for them to fill up their car in the awesome Bay area with amazing people doing fantastic work to "change" the world. Why aren't you guys picking up on these things? You are SMART, so WHY aren't you?
There is no God, remember?
Also, are you trying to be clever, offensive or something else entirely by contributing with silly one-liners?
Whether it stops at 8 or 9 billion doesn't really make an impact until 2150 at best. IF we had the resources to keep everything puffing till then. We don't. :)
The biggest problem is resource depletion and overpopulation. Overpopulation will be "fixed" through starvation and death. Resource depletion will leave the current young and future generations with far less extravagant lives. Adding to the overpopulation through vaccination programmes und su weiter is a misstep.
Nobody has even come close at finding anything as useful as hydrocarbons. I bid you good luck. If he's < 5 he won't even have the chance as we're past the net energy peak from oil.
Yes, it's the most peaceful in absolute numbers. It's also the shittiest in absolute numbers. Subsidized by cheap, surplus energy, courtesy of ancient plant and dino matter.
Don't have kids. They will have far shittier lives, not to mention shorter, than yours, thanks to the end of cheap fossil fuels. They're also a hundred thousand dollar expense. Do not want!
I suppose most of you are so prone to optimist thinking and nurturing your biological urges you won't heed my call. Ah well.
Oh, and by the way, the current worldwide depression will never end.
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/wp-content/uploads/2011/...
Club of Rome tried to warn, but since we wanted growth, collapse is what "we" "deserve". Thanks former generations for not heeding the rational advice.
Batteries can't be an alternative because:
1) They need fossil fuels and finite minerals/metals to be manufactured and transported
2) The EROEI is way less
The earth had plenty of room and resources before we "decided" (we didn't, we're humans, like yeast we try to consume everything in our path until the overshoot is apparent and we collapse) that 7-9 billion people and American 1000 gallon a year per capita lifestyles were viable. Haha, what folly.
No, because even if we got more of those (and fossil fuels, the most crucial component of our "prosperous" Western societies aren't available from the skies) we wouldn't solve the most conspicuous problem: growth. Billions will die in this century, world pop will plummet to ~ 0.5 billion and the Internet, cars and all such trivialities will vanish.
The first step? Stopping the senseless notion we will ever get off this rock and implement a "reduce, reuse, recycle and do without" paradigm akin to world war 2 rationing, will be the first step.
Never is the most realistic deadline.
Yeah, no. Elon Musk should instead focus on fixing the Peaks that will make the Almighty Industrial Revolution look like a blip on the easel of the history of history. Space travel, cars and the Internet has no future beyond the next 10~ years. Possibly shorter if the financial paradigm falls sooner.
* Peak oil, gas, coal, phosphorous, rare earth metals, uranium, copper, iron und su weiter.
Sorry Elon!
You're only sorry your comment was noticed and attacked.
Posted by
krie on Thursday January 24, 2013 @05:06AM
from the self-post dept.
Let's take the recent Driverless car news item, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5107615. "This will change everything". Replacing hundreds of millions of cars with these new ones will take billions of barrels of oil for R&D, manufacturing, transport and we haven't solved the fundamental issue of internal combustion engines: they require refined liquid hydrocarbons, and a gallon of gas...
