Will we make it?

[Satori]

How's your faith in humanity?

We only really have a small window of opportunity to advance and gain the necessary technology to survive an inevitable world-scale natural disaster. It doesn't particularly matter what the disaster is - big meteor strike, massive earthquake, super volcano, ice age, whatever - but we may only have tens of thousands of years (possibly even less than that) to advance enough to be able to cope with it.

Scientists class civilisations as types I, II and III based on the percentage of the energy those civilisations use from their host star.

A type I civilisation uses all the energy that falls on the home planet from the star.

A type II civilisation uses all the energy from the star itself (and thus assumes that travel between planets of the solar system is frequent enough to utilise other planets and moons to trap and use the star's energy).

A type III civilisation uses the energy of more than one star (and thus assumes travel beyond the solar system to other star systems).

We're currently a type 0.7 apparently and we may need to get to a type II in order to assure that civilisation survives a world-scale natural disaster.

In order to do that, we not only have to hope that the impending natural disaster holds off for long enough to allow us to advance sufficiently, but we also have to ensure that mankind doesn't destroy itself in the interim.

Will we do it?

[Shiggy]

We'll probably have a long time. There's heaps of debate at the moment about whether things like global warming are actually that much of an immediate threat. Have you read Michael Crichton's "State of Fear"?

[Satori]

Shiggy said:

We'll probably have a long time. There's heaps of debate at the moment about whether things like global warming are actually that much of an immediate threat. Have you read Michael Crichton's "State of Fear"?

I haven't read that, but I do know a bit about global warming from when I worked at the Rutherford Appleton Labs.

[Areopagite]

I don't think we will advance technologically enough to stop those things nor survive a large scale assault of such diasters. I believe that the earth will be destroyed in the last days and that men will be judged according to their deeds (Book of Revelation). I would also say that I have no faith in humanity since I believe that man can do nothing without God.

[Satori]

Areopagite said:

I don't think we will advance technologically enough to stop those things nor survive a large scale assault of such diasters. I believe that the earth will be destroyed in the last days and that men will be judged according to their deeds (Book of Revelation). I would also say that I have no faith in humanity since I believe that man can do nothing without God.

I thought you might think that, although I don't think we need to add superstition in order to be in trouble.

Revelation can't really fail to be correct if it pictures a world beset by plague, fire, water and such things because it will happen. Now if your omniscient God had put an exact date on it I'd have been really impressed, but I expect He wants us to 'read the signs' or some other convenient 'get-out'.

Personally I think if we make it through the next 200-300 years without destroying ourselves I think our only concern then will be whether or not we develop the technology before the natural disaster hits.

[Electron]

Fortunately the intervals between catastrophic events are quite long compared to the developmental time scales of our species.

However, it's worth considering our species position on the tree of life... while many see us as some sort of "crowning glory", we are in fact in the uncomfortable position of being at the end of a very bare branch... exactly the same sort of spot occupied by severely endangered species on the brink of extinction.

I think what makes us such a danger to ourselves and to other life on this planet is that although we have developed conceptual brains above and beyond the autonomous and limbic, we are still driven largely by the limbic. Thus we make food plentiful, but become obese because our instincts haven't caught up with our supply skills and compel us to unnecessarily 'stock-up while the goings good' for example.

I expect our survival will depend on how fast we can adapt to our new-found conceptual capabilities. Unfortunately this requires the continuation of natural selection which would require significant time scales and of course a functional selection mechanism. In the case of obesity I'm afraid to say it already has a head-start.

We also possess a very poor perspective on time - which I'm sure accounts for the acceptance problem for some with evolution. The fact that we rarely live beyond double-digits equips us poorly for appreciating the power of what a million, ten million, hundred million, or a thousand million years can do. The obvious problem with this is that we can't see the effects we're having on the planet in a single lifetime. If we lived for as long as a sequoia tree we'd probably be more careful about our use of resources.

[Shiggy]

Yeah, and evolution is so screwed up now, as it is often the case that the poor have higher birthrates than the affluent, perpetuating many social problems such as sickness, drug addiction propensity, poor diet, etc. in the gene pool.