I disagree with most of what you say.
Climate deniers are causing harm, especially the ones who own/operate newspapers, TV networks, political parties, government agencies, etc.
You CAN reason someone out of something they reasoned themselves into. The saying goes that you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. /pedantry
The idea that number of humans is the biggest driver of climate change is a red herring. Your calculation only works if we assume technology halted in 1950, and that the world can only maintain a certain number being as naturally wasteful and inefficient as our ancestors.
But there isn't really a single industry that has not improved in efficiency over the last century. Clearly, as time progresses we learn to do more work with less energy. With increasing efficiency for all, each persons environmental footprint gets smaller. We can therefore afford an increasingly large population for the same environmental cost.
The idea that the present human population is unsustainable is dangerously wrong. Countries that demanded living space in the great wars of the 20th century now have smaller countries supporting larger populations enjoying a significantly higher quality of life. That is the real trend the world over - there are more of us, living longer, better lives than ever before.
Technology will save us. Mining will start to move off-world, probably within the first half of this century. Nuclear fusion (probably arriving around the same time) will be a massive change for the better. Plastic recycling will continue to improve in efficiency and profitability. Dinosaur juice will be taxed to the extreme and CO2 will be extracted from the air to make rocket fuel, much of which will leave the planet entirely.
The future is a happy place.
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brb natural fistic, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 19:43,
Reply)
This may be a set of believable trends, assuming everyone plays ball.
On the other hand it smacks of littering because 'someone else will pick it up eventually'.
We are also going to struggle to recreate complex ecosystems.
Predicting the far future has a terrible track record, I'm still waiting for the free electricity promised in the sixties.
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FeralCatMan Unusual disease collector., Fri 3 Jul 2020, 20:01,
Reply)
Speaking of littering.
We've already fucked space in that regard. And only a few of us bloody live there, so far!
(, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 20:03, Reply)
We have not fucked space.
99.999999% of everything we've chucked up there is in LEO and will drag back down within tens to hundreds of years. There are a few things up there that could last a few millennia before turning to dust, but I don't count that as rubbish or littering. I'm quite proud that there are bags of human shit and piss on the moon, and I'm quite entertained by the idea that those bags will be holy relics one day.
If you think we've fucked space by launching RTGs or nuclear reactors, cosmic rays and solar radiation are the hurricane to our gnat fart in that respect.
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brb natural fistic, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 20:54,
Reply)
By that logic, we shouldn't really worry too much about our current ecological impact on Earth because of earthquakes and volcanoes...
And on the subject of space debris: Is that an issue that's going to become significantly worse or significantly better once the Moon becomes a commercially viable source of consumables?
Assuming anyone survives the massive fucking war that will take place establishing ownership of the single most profitable resource in the solar system...
(, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 21:18, Reply)
No, because we have a measurable effect on our closed(ish) system. Space is effectively infinite, and we have not added to the sum of lethal radiation by sending an RTG powered probe to a gas giant where natural radiation levels are exponentially higher.
There shouldn't be much litter resulting from space launches from the Moon for a few reasons
1: Single Stage To Orbit is the standard launch model from the surface of the moon. This means you don't need to throw away stages, fuel tanks, decouplers, o-rings and whatever.
2: Assuming we are going there to stay, we shan't be throwing bags of piss and shit away any more. That's all getting recycled.
3: Assuming reusability and environmentalism are here to stay, rockets will continue to be less wasteful - e.g. SpaceX's Falcon fairings are becoming increasingly reusable, and SpaceX's ITS/BFR/Starship system could even do away with a lot of the 'littering' that you see in falcon launches because they have cargo bays integrated with the 2nd stage, which will generally speaking return to Earth or stay put on the moon or Mars.
I'm with Zubrin - humans are the most profitable resource in the solar system.
But even if you're purely talking about precious metals, the moon is a barren desert compared to the asteroid belt. And if you only want fuel, the methane lakes of Titan are somewhat more appealing than the wisps of hydrogen found in lunar regolith.
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brb natural fistic, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 21:48,
Reply)
On point 2.
You assume that we won't be throwing bags of piss and shit away. But what about materials that aren't so readily recyclable? If launching rubbish into space was commercially viable, we'd already be doing it and reassuring the people of Earth that it'll all burn up when it hits the Sun. On the Moon, launching our detritus into space might end up being a realistic prospect.
(, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 21:56, Reply)
The moon has no atmosphere for anything to burn up in.
To reach the sun, you'd need to cancel out all of Earth's orbital speed (averaging at 29.78 km/s that's a lot of delta-v), or utilise some clever cosmic billiards to reverse slingshot your velocity down low enough to spend the last of your fuel on the last few hundred m/s needed to deorbit into the sun. Not worth it, even if you could make fusion powered ships.
You could just launch your rubbish into a nice long suborbital ballistic trajectory and let it burn up like that. An incinerator would always be safer, and I expect a lot more efficient than using a Starship as a garbage scow.
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brb natural fistic, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 22:19,
Reply)
You could just send Sockcookers mum up to eat it all
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Fadgebadger Sweaty sumo wanks for everyone!, Sat 4 Jul 2020, 9:27,
Reply)
If we're not in such dire need of living space, why all the new homes?
And who’s permission do we seek to mine the moon once we develop the technology to do it efficiently? Have we decided who owns it, yet?
(, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 20:02, Reply)
You joke.
But in the 1970's the Clangers had already built a self sustaining moon colony, developed optics advanced enough to clearly observe human behaviour on earth on a person by person basis and constructed a fully self-aware robot chicken.
Understandably, they kept their defensive and military capabilities under wraps, but considering the advancements in technology they were openly demonstrating 50 years ago, it's safe to say that they'd be a considerable adversary in the 21st century. At the very least, I'd imagine they'd have a fully developed arsenal of Neutron Bombs and Gauss cannons.
(, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 20:32, Reply)
Luckily the chicken relocated to the US and had a comedy career.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=mb23xZI3AWc
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FeralCatMan Unusual disease collector., Fri 3 Jul 2020, 20:51,
Reply)
'Living space' was a concept used to justify invading other countries and ethnic cleansing.
You're confusing it with the housing market, which is a much duller subject.
Trump has been doing his executive order shit wrt off-world mining rights, but I don't think they count for much internationally. There are lobbyists trying to get things codified in international law to establish prospecting rights but it's all quite vague and nebulous right now.
As China's interest in space grows I think we'll see the international community react faster with treaties and legislation. It will probably take China, Russia or the USA to just start mining the moon to force the issue.
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brb natural fistic, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 21:10,
Reply)
I'm not confusing anything. The housing market exists because there is demand.
These houses aren't staying empty. The excuses people historically used for invading other countries is completely irrelevant in this context.
We need more houses because our parents' houses are still inhabited by our parents at the time we generally decide to start our own family. These new builds don't lie empty. Christ, I live in one of the most sparsely populated areas of the UK, and there are people camping in the streets of new builds just to get a chance of a place on the waiting list.
We're having too many children at too young an age and then living too long. You can make any argument you like about other contributing factors to climate change, but that's what it all boils down to.
(, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 21:27, Reply)
You are continuing to confuse the concept of 'living space' (a rationale for invading other countries and ethnic cleansing) with public housing.
I for one am not impressed.
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brb natural fistic, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 21:53,
Reply)
Improvement in technology has so far failed to cancel out the catastrophic effect of human population size on biodiversity. Two billion people on the planet will do less damage, with speedy boarding for everyone.
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Mudface The web isn't callipygian, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 21:37,
Reply)
I hope technology will ultimately reverse downward trends in biodiversity. Through genetic engineering, nanotechnology, robotics and AI, and ultimatelly by seeding the galaxy with new life.
We are the only mass extinction event in history that is aware that it's a mass extinction event. The comet that did for the dinosaurs didn't even know what a planet is. We've got this.
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brb natural fistic, Fri 3 Jul 2020, 22:01,
Reply)
We have no time
I'm sure that, without time constraints, we would ultimately find the technological solutions to the problem (whether we transition to a socially just world at the same time is another matter entirely)
BUT - and it's a big but, I cannot lie - you seem to be totally unaware of the time constraints. The UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2019 demonstrates that we have until 2030 to be on the right trajectory to have a good chance of limiting global temperature increase to 1.5degC. Nuclear fusion by 2050 is too late. What your statement about plastic recycling has to do with it, I don't know. The idea of governments taxing oil to the hilt seems wildly optimistic as we see the world tilting ever closer to neoliberalism and global capitalism. Carbon capture and storage seems to be the 'get out of jail free' card that people play because they realise we can't live our current lifestyles whilst simply reducing the associated emissions - however, it's an unproven technology and 'one hell of a gamble' - to quote Kevin Anderson, a leading climate scientist. He also said,
“Many say that such rapid and deep change is unrealistic – but it’s much more realistic than believing a fair and progressive society can survive with 3, 4 or even 5C of warming,”
(, Sat 4 Jul 2020, 11:11, Reply)