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Personally I'm an Expansionist, We have space to conquer.

But we do need to get a move on it before it is to late to do that.

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You forgot to add that not only should we increase population, we need to increase consumerism so that everyone can live in a 5000 sq ft home with a swimming pool and lawn and drive two Hummers.

Makes sense, if you are headed over the cliff anyway, might as well step on the gas and see how far you can fly.

Jason

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Jason

"Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice." Will Durant

NexStar 11 GPS
WO 80mm 10th Anniversary
TEC140 #360

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We can be expansionist on a glactic scale and still overpopulated on a planetary scale. In this case, we need to be moving both directions simultaneously.

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Why this is true of course.

But would you rather:

Have an over populated Earth, But viable colonies in 20-30 star systems? With unlimited resources.

Or a a few hundred million Humans living in a low tech aggrarian society? With Limited resources.

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Mike
N8/CG-5/40D
Coming sometime/Maybe FrankenRebel

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A long life allowed Global Surveyor to track changes through repeated annual cycles. For three Martian summers in a row, deposits of carbon-dioxide ice near Mars' South Pole shrunk from the previous year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress.

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will never populate the stars
Boyd

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Never's a long time.

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Mike
N8/CG-5/40D
Coming sometime/Maybe FrankenRebel

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We can be expansionist on a glactic scale and still overpopulated on a planetary scale. In this case, we need to be moving both directions simultaneously.

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Why this is true of course.

But would you rather:

Have an over populated Earth, But viable colonies in 20-30 star systems? With unlimited resources.

Or a a few hundred million Humans living in a low tech aggrarian society? With Limited resources.

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That's a false choice. It's JUST as possible to have viable colonies in 20-30 star systems with access to whatever resources those systems possess, AND a few hundred million humans in a prosperous, technological earthly civilization, with access to the resources Earth possesses.

There no requirement or inevitability that a smaller population must be a less advanced one -- unless the cause of our smaller population is a Jared Diamond-class ecological, economic, and social collapse.

It IS reasonable to expect, however, that the "unlimited" resources of extra-solar colonies are unlimited only in the aggregate, and are not easily shared between the individual colonies themselves, or with the Earth.

Earth may be the origin of billions of future space colonists, but it is not likely to be a major beneficiary of those colonies. And colonizing space beyond earth will not be a solution to its population woes -- even if untold billions of human-descended extra-terrestrials can in some future time trace their ancestry to Earth, the number of actual earthlings that leave the home world for the colonies is not likely to be more than a few tens of thousands at the most.

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"S.O.E." (Sauron's Other Eye) 16" Royce conical mirror: A permanent work in progress.
10" Homebuilt dob, old Coulter mirror


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There no requirement or inevitability that a smaller population must be a less advanced one -- unless the cause of our smaller population is a Jared Diamond-class ecological, economic, and social collapse.

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True, But I see the only "real" choices as either collapse or expansion off planet.

I don't believe we'll be able to raise the third world to first world standards with earth only resources, and so far the only successful society level birth control is becoming a First World country.

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Mike
N8/CG-5/40D
Coming sometime/Maybe FrankenRebel

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...humans aren't going to reduce to 500 million through planetary exhaustion. ..

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I don't believe we'll be able to raise the third world to first world standards with earth only resources, and so far the only successful society level birth control is becoming a First World country.

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I think we may need to redefine what "prosperity" actually means: instead of "rampant consumerism" perhaps merely a well-fed, healthy, educated, sustainable population with the freedom and means to communicate and progress, and without pockets of extreme poverty, hunger, ignorance, or disease.

With that standard, I think it will be possible in principle to gradually and humanely reduce the worlds population without catastrophic death and misery.

Whether the world's societies will actually see the light and take action in time is another question. I'm optimistic in principle, but maybe not so much in practice.

There's another catch-22 regarding the "expanding off-planet" scenario. The first extra-terrestrial colonies are likely to be heavily dependent on the home world for an undetermined amount of time after they are established. That means the Earth itself has to be productive enough to sustain those colonies until they can become truly independent. So, for a long time, the colonies will be just as vulnerable to the Earth's problems as is the Earth population itself. If terrestrial society collapses, the space colonies will be stranded, and starve.

So, while we're moving both directions simultaneously, it's just as important to ensure the Earth's sustainability for the sake of future extra-terrestrials as it is for future Earthlings.

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"S.O.E." (Sauron's Other Eye) 16" Royce conical mirror: A permanent work in progress.
10" Homebuilt dob, old Coulter mirror


Next Project: The "Eye of Sauron" Observatory!

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Eventually, despite the stall tactics, the truth came out, but even today some refuse to believe that smoking causes cancer.

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My wife and I got an excellent deal on 9.38 acres of land here, with a well and trees, simply because a certain person did not believe that smoking causes cancer.

It's sad, but false beliefs have consequences -- and there is always going to be someone, or something waiting to take advantage of the misfortunes of another.

It's true that there are many possible natural causes of global warming. But in the last decade, it looks like we've pretty much accounted for all those possibilities. It's not the Sun, it's not bacteria, it's not cosmic rays, and it's not volcanoes. The only factor that has really changed in the last few hundred years is human influence.

Sometimes, you really DO have to accept the obvious.

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"S.O.E." (Sauron's Other Eye) 16" Royce conical mirror: A permanent work in progress.
10" Homebuilt dob, old Coulter mirror


Next Project: The "Eye of Sauron" Observatory!

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I think we may need to redefine what "prosperity" actually means: instead of "rampant consumerism" perhaps merely a well-fed, healthy, educated, sustainable population with the freedom and means to communicate and progress, and without pockets of extreme poverty, hunger, ignorance, or disease.

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It's not the Sun, .... The only factor that has really changed in the last few hundred years is human influence.

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My understanding is that we've only has space based solar measurment for like 15 yr's, and we know that sun's sunspot cycle changes in a 200-300 yr period, But it's never been measured.

There's also a NASA report showing how jet contrails account for like 60% of the measured temperature increase since like 1984.

Unfortunately the only real solution is some combination of wind/solar and nuclear. Then use the electric to split water.

But I think water vapor is a stronger greenhouse gas then CO2 is.

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Mike
N8/CG-5/40D
Coming sometime/Maybe FrankenRebel

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My understanding is that we've only has space based solar measurment for like 15 yr's, and we know that sun's sunspot cycle changes in a 200-300 yr period, But it's never been measured.

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Not directly. However, fluctuations in cosmogenic isotopes 14C and 10Be (from ice cores and tree rings) are used as a proxy for solar variation. Surprisingly, there are very strong correlations between these isotopic records and some paleoclimatic records, suggesting that cyclical variations in the sun pace some climate cycles. The main problem here is one of correlation vs causation. Variations in insolation are insufficient to drive the amplitude of climate change recorded in paleoclimate records. There needs to be some positive feedback mechanism to amplify the signal.

Jason

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Jason

"Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice." Will Durant

NexStar 11 GPS
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TEC140 #360

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But I think water vapor is a stronger greenhouse gas then CO2 is.

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Socialism doesn't work. The speed in much of our rapid advance in technology is because someone is trying to become rich, None of the other systems work all that well.

I do agree there needs to be rules to prevent cheats, But, Who is really qualified to tell you how much money you should make by working hard and being successful?

We take stuff we dig out of the ground and turn it into trillions in merchandise and food.

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Untempered socialism doesn't work, true. Neither does unregulated capitalism -- it descends into feudalism and then collapse. Any stable economy will blend the two in some way. As far as who is "qualified" to tell someone else how much they can earn, that's not the point. The point is how much they can take from existing resources without giving them back in some way.

A sustainable economy can't be based on consumption alone, it has to be based on wealth creation and distribution. And many of our measurements of wealth creation are simply not realistic from the standpoint of what is gained and what is lost. Until recently, environmental costs were never factored into the equations of profit and loss.

I've got nothing against hard work and profit, but let's be sure that hard work is focused on creating new resources or maintaining existing ones, not on destroying them.

After all, those who drove the Woolly Mammoth, the Passenger Pigeon, and Arawak indians to extinction were all hard working folks.

Unless and until we can create infinitely growing sets of resources, we cannot sustain an infinitely growing population. A rapid advance in technology that creates a prosperity at the expense of available resources is a false and ephemeral prosperity, and to assume it is a fundamental "right" is a delusion. The Earth won't give more than it has, and for everyone who profits now, someone else will pay dearly later.

If recognizing the limits of our resources is socialism, and if responsible resource management is socialism, and if socialism can't succeed in principle, then we're pretty much doomed, aren't we? Because infinite expansion can't happen, either.

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"S.O.E." (Sauron's Other Eye) 16" Royce conical mirror: A permanent work in progress.
10" Homebuilt dob, old Coulter mirror


Next Project: The "Eye of Sauron" Observatory!

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...For those expousing their wishes for 90% of the Earth's population to disappear, I'm sure they never consider themselves or their families as part of that 90% to be the one