Please tell me, just how would we become extinct in 500 years? We are talking about the most adaptive animal that ever has lived on this planet. 1517 was a short time ago. — ssu
Please tell me, just how would we become extinct in 500 years? — ssu
Peak Oil is the perfect example of this: what basically has happened is Peak conventional Oil. As the price has gone up, so has the means to make oil from various materials. People simply forget two important things in the equation: the price mechanism and the advances in technology. — ssu
Why the need for a bang or for a whimper? Why not voyage on without knowing? Not well, but forward none the less? — Noble Dust
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. — Beckett
Actually, 19th Century Sci-Fi did many times underestimate the technological advances. All that what now has become Steampunk. Naturally extremely rarely can people have an idea of some new technology and the way it's used before it's discovered.I have the impression that sci-fi predictions or depictions of the future have almost always overshot the mark in a lot of ways (flying cars, usually with no discernible means of flight or propulsion, are a staple of sci-fi depictions of "the future"). The TV show Lost in Space took place in 1997, for example.
Sometimes sci-fi has underestimated certain technological developments. For instance, the film Blade Runner had Atari signs in the background, and phone booths were still in use, with no sign of cell phones. — Arkady
First, Hubbert's theory of Peak Oil was about the production in general.The limiting factor on oil production (which produces peak oil) is that at some point, the energy required to extract oil exceeds the energy available in the oil. When we reach that point, we're finished with that technology. There is literally no point in continuing. — Bitter Crank
As I've said, how we get out from using oil is when there is a cheaper method of producing energy. Or to say it another way: when oil is so expensive to other means. Yet in the equation there simply has to be the other ways of producing energy. Because if the price of oil rises... and would still be the cheapest energy source, then you have a Giffen good.But it seems to me to be very overly optimistic to assume that oil production will continue indefinitely into the future, regardless of the energy or cash value of the oil extracted compared to the energy cost required to obtain the oil. — Bitter Crank
..or we don't yet have electric passenger jets, cargo ships or electric heavy haul trucks, even if you start having electric cars. The combustion engine still rules, even if times are changing...The most problematic scenario is the one in which we don't make timely and sufficient adaptations to other energy sources, like wind and solar. As James H. Kunstler points out, we don't have a substitute for cheap oil in the manufacture, distribution, and maintenance of windmills and solar arrays. — Bitter Crank
So then the question is, how much we could backtrack, stagnate in 500 years?"The world" will not literally come to an end, unless a black hole stops by and vacuums it up before moving on to more pressing business. Homo sapiens will (probably) not literally vanish in 500 years, unless aliens stop by to rid the universe of whatever threat we pose to their own schemes. — Bitter Crank
That doesn't mean anything alive, or once alive, will survive along with it.
I think it's safe to say that, oh, maybe 20,000 air bursts would generate enough widely distributed radiation and dust to cause some pretty seriously problems for the biosphere. — Bitter Crank
I don't think I suggested that intelligent life in the cosmos was going to get wiped out -- just here. — Bitter Crank
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