The Day Of Seven Billion

[RisingFury]

You mean the 19th century in imperial Europe? When the term "Dark Ages" had been invented by people who got their academic degrees by feudal relationships?

Otherwise, there had never been anything that can be called Dark Ages. Some innovations had maybe been more boring than others, and some places decided to focus on soft skills instead of hard technology, but you NEVER had stagnation or decline in knowledge.

It's the burning of books and surpression of science and education in favor of religious superstition that make the period called "Dark Ages"...

When Gutenberg rolled into town witha cart full of books and the local bishop discovered they're all identical, he got accued of devil worship and black magic. The printed books were copies of the Bible, oh the irony!

 

[Urwumpe]

Most people know no more about the cars they drive and computers they use than they do about bows or Latin, though. That I think is the big failure.

And still - even the most stupid people we can name, use technology easily and have skills that go beyond the imagination of people 1000 years ago. Even if we have advanced again so far, that a single human can't build, what we need in everyday life.

 

[Ghostrider]

It's the burning of books and surpression of science and education in favor of religious superstition that make the period called "Dark Ages"...

Well, then I'd say we're now living in the darkest ages of all then.

Back in the Middle Ages the Church had a complete monopoly on education, they built the first universities and the only way to be a scholar was to be in the Catholic Club. I'd say if they wanted to stomp out science, they managed to take all the wrong steps.

 

[Urwumpe]

also... how was a copy shop called in 816 AD?

Abbey

A typical profession of monks was to duplicate books - and these books had not always been the bible. The Carmina Burana for example, was a collection of clerical and worldly songs and poems, collected by a number of mostly anonymous monks.

 

[Izack]

And still - even the most stupid people we can name, use technology easily and have skills that go beyond the imagination of people 1000 years ago. Even if we have advanced again so far, that a single human can't build, what we need in everyday life.

So he can drive a car, but if it breaks he has no idea what to do with it, because to him, technology is just what magic was to Medieval Man. Everyone's happy to benefit from the results as long as no one asks him to understand the means. It also doesn't help that ignorance has been in vogue for the past few decades.

 

[OrbiterSpore]

My thoughts? well, i have some solutions that complies with our current/near future tech.:

Lack of food/living space?
Genetically-modified plants to use the available environmental resources in floating cities such as "Megafloat" mentioned in Ace Combat 3. There's also the outer space living and the underwater/underground cities, too.

Energy sources?
More stabilized hydrogen and nuke power plants can handle.(i think)
There's always the experimental sources like microwave power plants, deep deep sea geothermical power plants count, too.
This applies somewhat:

Fuel consumption for spacecraft?
New propulsion than standard fuel, fine-tuning for best performance and less pollution. (or not... depends on the remaining time until our atmosphere gets toxic... or not... :uhh

Trash and rubbish?
Good old fashioned recycling...
About the non-recyclable, launch to an high-pressure and temperature planet... It will melt up.

Building/Manufacturing materials(or lack of it?)?
Mining asteroids or moons. Otherwise, better don't be claustrophobic and start your subsurface work...

Fuel for citizen vehicles?
Solar power and/or bio-fuels... Otherwise, get a bike and put 2 extra wheels, a roofing and an light windshield onto it... :lol:

What about the lack of gravity, in the forced space living's worst-case scenario?
Good question... Do an spinning object in space provides gravity?

What about natural disasters?
VERY accurate predictions and/or forecasts, seismic monitoring and space object trajectory predictions.

If there's anything wrong up there, quote me.

 

[Urwumpe]

So he can drive a car, but if it breaks he has no idea what to do with it, because to him, technology is just what magic was to Medieval Man. Everyone's happy to benefit from the results as long as no one asks him to understand the means. It also doesn't help that ignorance has been in vogue for the past few decades.

And? A farmer can't even make hooves for his horses, if he had some at all. Knifes are even beyond reach for less skilled smiths. Many forges had actually many smiths and apprentices for making better tools possible.

Many people had not even the tools and skills for making pottery. Humans always had experts and specialists for tasks. A miller was not somebody who had no land to farm on, but actually for some centuries, one of the most important experts. A wind miller is even today a specialist, may it be for historic mills or for modern wind power plants.

 

[Izack]

So then our specialists are more advanced than they were in the past, but the layman of today is still the layman of the last few centuries, except he pushes buttons now instead of oxen (in some parts of the world.)

 

[Urwumpe]

So then our specialists are more advanced than they were in the past, but the layman of today is still the layman of the last few centuries, except he pushes buttons now instead of oxen (in some parts of the world.)

Maybe yes. Maybe the term "layman" itself is already misleading, as most humans quickly develop into specialists in a field.

 

[Unstung]

There's been what is classified as a drought for the past 5 years or so. The 3rd one since Hoover Dam was completed in the 1930s:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/LakeMead/

http://www.sandiego.gov/water/conservation/drought/

According to the government there's no reason to worry though (unless you can't afford the water rate increase perhaps) :


http://www.usbr.gov/uc/feature/drought.html

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarep...19lake-mead-water-level-new-historic-low.html
http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/20...record-low-levels-is-the-southwest-drying-up/
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/dec/22/rain-will-lift-lake-mead-water-levels-only-slightl/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/us/28mead.html?_r=1
Mead hit a record low seven years after that article. The west has been especially warm this winter, but the forecast shows more snow in the West around New Years. Yet if this keeps up, it's not good for the growing population.
Lake Powell: http://lakepowell.water-data.com/
And here's a graph that continues the NASA one from 2003: http://www.arachnoid.com/NaturalResources/

 

[T.Neo]

There's also the outer space living and the underwater/underground cities, too.

Yeah, that's all fine and well, but the problem is: motivation.

I find ocean colonisation interesting though, especially because there have been incentives to go to sea for millenia already.

More stabilized hydrogen and nuke power plants can handle.(i think)

Hydrogen? You mean the stuff that's so difficult to manufacture and store?

Fuel consumption for spacecraft?
New propulsion than standard fuel, fine-tuning for best performance and less pollution. (or not... depends on the remaining time until our atmosphere gets toxic... or not... )

Uh... no. Kerolox gives basically the same byproducts as any other fossil fuel combustion (CO2 and water vapour). Hydrolox is very environmentally friendly, with exhaust that is predominantly water vapour with small amounts of hydrogen peroxide and ozone.

I'm not sure what the exhaust products of hypergolics are, but I really don't see why you'd want to use them out of choice for a launch vehicle.

Solid propellants are unfriendly, considering that they introduce aluminium oxide powder and hydrogen chloride into the environment. But that new nitrogen compound could change all that, provided that it's plausible as an oxidiser.

Either way their chemistry contributions to the atmosphere are not really anything to worry about, considering that constributions from other forms of transport are far higher... I dunno, maybe with a increase in the frequency of rocket launches, it might be a considerable contribution.

The bigger problem is ozone depletion... rockets will introduce large amounts of water vapour, for example, into the ozone layer, and that can be destructive.

About the non-recyclable, launch to an high-pressure and temperature planet... It will melt up.

I hope you're kidding. :shifty:

Building/Manufacturing materials(or lack of it?)?
Mining asteroids or moons. Otherwise, better don't be claustrophobic and start your subsurface work...

We don't need to get concrete, or aluminium, or iron from asteroids. It's pretty abundant here, at a cost orders of magnitude less.

Solar power and/or bio-fuels... Otherwise, get a bike and put 2 extra wheels, a roofing and an light windshield onto it...

Good luck driving a solar powered car, at night. Or when it's raining. Or having it be practical at all.

Pedal power car? Not practical unless you want to go just to the corner cafe...

What about the lack of gravity, in the forced space living's worst-case scenario?
Good question... Do an spinning object in space provides gravity?

Yes it does, that's the principle centrifuges- used to train astronauts and pilots- operate on. Where they are used on Earth to generate acceleration multiple times that of Earth's gravity, entire spacecraft (or sections of them) can be spun in space, to generate Earth-equivalent artificial gravity.

What about natural disasters?
VERY accurate predictions and/or forecasts, seismic monitoring and space object trajectory predictions.

Sufficient building codes and proper disaster response would certainly help...

 

[Keatah]

Oh I don't know about all of this and that and everything..

I think that people today, in the technological developed cultures, are brainwashed by marketing and creature comforts. We almost WANT to be led around and tolted what to do! Spelling and grammar have gone to hell too! haha.

The quality of people's thought processes today is getting worse with each generation. I say we need less people. Put a moratorium on birth for 50 years. For reason why this is justified, just hang out in any crowd, everything is mindless!!

 

[jinglesassy]

Put a moratorium on birth for 50 years. For reason why this is justified, just hang out in any crowd, everything is mindless!!

And that will most likely either cause a huge world wide riot. Extinction. Or population able to be countable on your fingers.

 

[T.Neo]

I think that people today, in the technological developed cultures, are brainwashed by marketing and creature comforts.

Creature comforts? You mean, like clean water, proper housing, and relatively abundant food?

I get tired of people who criticise the developed world, for being developed. If it is so nice to go without "uneeded" things and "creature comforts", I suggest that you try living in a place where these things do not exist; i.e. a place where people are sleeping under piles of corrugated iron, drinking and washing in water that is filled with unspeakable pathogens, and having to do back-breaking work to subsist on meagre amounts of food.

I say we need less people. Put a moratorium on birth for 50 years. For reason why this is justified, just hang out in any crowd, everything is mindless!!

If the justification is the elimination of noisy crowds, then what is the target population size? One?

And that will most likely either cause a huge world wide riot. Extinction. Or population able to be countable on your fingers.

None of that, probably not even the riot part... but it will result in the quick removal of such a lawmaker from office.

 

[Mojave]

I do not believe that space is the problem, I believe that it is natural for more and more people to be born. It is just a fact of life that you cannot stop parents from having children. It is also wrong for a government to say that you cannot have kids. That is a violation of human rights, and constitutional rights of the American people, and against many religions. The chinese birth laws are also against the right of their people. By the Way, do we not kill enough people through abortions, and euthenasia that is should not make a difference to the living population on the Earth. Which is also a violation of ones rights, especially the lives that are killed during these terrible acts. I know that we will never run out of room, nor have a too little population on the Earth.

 

[Urwumpe]

The Chinese birth laws are first of all: Futile. They don't prevent parents from having more children, despite having serious fines. Nature always wins against technology. It is a sad realization, but as engineer, it is an important one. You can't fight against nature, you have to fight with it.

But: We can maybe not run out of space, but out of resources. Can you even estimate how much farmland one western citizen alone needs for his typical diet? You might be surprised. What we eat today, we couldn't have farmed alone in the past.

 

[Mojave]

I do realize that is true, we do need a lot of resources, but I still believe that we will never run out of these resources. We were put on this planet for a reason, some to farm, some to fight in wars, and some to engineer things, etc. We would not be here if we could not help ourselves and survive by our own hard work. Sometimes the impossible becomes the possible. Think of resources as your parents. You can always depend on them to bring home food, and water to you. Some may be better off then others, but they still live relatively good lives. Same with the Earth. It will always bring forth fruit from the ground, and we will always be able to eat and drink.

 

[Urwumpe]

We were put on this planet for a reason, some to farm, some to fight in wars, and some to engineer things, etc.

Ouch. That hurts. :facepalm:

 

[Mojave]

Why, it is only true. I wasn't saying anything bad about your engineering work. It is kinda cool, actually.

 

[T.Neo]

It is also wrong for a government to say that you cannot have kids. That is a violation of human rights, and constitutional rights of the American people, and against many religions.

While I agree fully, it is important to note that a government does not fall under the constitution of the US, unless of course, it is the US government.

I know that we will never run out of room

Impossible to never run out of room on the surface of the Earth. It's due to simple mathamatics, that even a kindergarten child could understand.

Theoretically, if you had enough people on the Earth there wouldn't be any space to move about. But in practice other things come into play long, long before that.

Like resources, which are similarly, not infinite on the limited sphere of the Earth.

But: We can maybe not run out of space, but out of resources. Can you even estimate how much farmland one western citizen alone needs for his typical diet? You might be surprised. What we eat today, we couldn't have farmed alone in the past.

A good place to start would be to divide the utilised arable land area of a given country by it's population; that might be able to give a good average.