How much confidence do you have in modern society to overcome

I have every confidence in the future of humanity. The reasons are best explained in this manifesto, which I highly recommend you read.

http://www.ecomodernism.org/

Key reasons;
- increasing development leads to less environmental dependence, and therefore impact, per capita
- the world has reached 'peak child', where global fertility rate is a stable ~2.6 children per woman. Result; better education and opportunities for children resulting in rapid development.
- projected global population at end of century is easily fed by farming current farmland more efficiently (inefficiency in developing world is staggering due to poor access to modern agricultural technology)

Earth is kill my friend. Focus on terraforming Mars.

>>7782920
Well people have been predicting malthusian collapse for a little over 200 years, it's still not happened. So I'm pretty confident.

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>>7783020
I think the 21st century is going to see either a malthusian collapse or at the least totalitarian despotic governments rising on the basis everything built over the last century, all modern infrastructure and agricultural practices require cheap oil. As we approach 8 billion people we will see oil prices oscillate wildly with demand destruction lows and shock highs, there is no sign of anything even coming remotely close to replacing easy cheap oil. Good times!

>>7783137
If you look at total oil production and not just light crude, it hasn't even peaked yet. Your predictions sound more like paranoid scifi delusions than serious opinions.

The cyanobacteria poisoned themselves with oxygen, and we're poisoning ourselves with radionuclides. Just like oxygen, radionuclides are high-energy, but they wouldn't have to be consumed to serve as molecular catalysts.

Everything we know will change or die. No state is sustainable forever. Our trash is tomorrow's treasure.

... 3 billion people in 1960?

Really?

>>7782920
we've already overcome it so I'm not worried.

natural gas alone will last america an easy 100 years and that gives us enough time to perfect other energy sources.

There are a number of key elements needed for modern industry and food production could be exhausted on Earth within 50–60 years. These include phosphorus, antimony, zinc, tin, lead, indium, silver, gold and copper.

>>7783137
>trend extrapolated from a change over the last 5 years

absolutely disgusting. I think that oil production will decay over time, but it's a matter of alternative energy sources, not ability to drill. there are enough oil sands in the world right now to support the world for centuries.

>>7783313
>Everything we know will change or die. No state is sustainable forever. Our trash is tomorrow's treasure.
Well ain't that just poetic

>>7783376

/sci/ story time

> Sometime in the last 3 years
> on the train to university
> two young parents and their child
> probably around 5 years old
> child asks how many people are on Earth
> father says he doesn't know and looks to wife
> father then guesses
> "about 1 million"
> mfw I have no face

Yeah! We're becoming more and more till there's noone left.

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>>7783147
They are not my predictions, my opinions are just an amalgamation of everything I've read and I don;t even do scifi. Oil doesn't pour into barrels under its own pressure by just sticking tubes in the ground anymore, in fact takes a barrel of oil equivalent energy just to get 2 out in most shale-tar goo operations. All I am saying is human population is exploding exponentially, the energy used to make that happen is plateauing and probably going to decline soon even with a major recession, especially with conventional resource wars as modern war machines are extremely energy intensive. You have to be extremely optimistic or ignorant of the facts to think things are going to get better down the road.

>>7783982
Maybe but realize the price of that extraction and refining will cost a lot of energy meaning prices will go high when those operations fire up. Alternative energy sources won't replace much of the source we used to build everything to being with, you can't build modern society or maintain it with wind generators and solar panels, or even with coal for that matter. We are just talking energy here, let alone clean fresh water and all the other resources used to make modern life work. I don't like to sound too Machiavellian but the best thing that could happen would be a major biological check on human population, a new Black Death and mass famine.

Most future population predictions are wrong because they can't predict future human action. Africa is actually showing signs of slowing birth rates, thanks to western intervention and contraceptives. East Africa's birth rate has fallen significantly thanks to intensive efforts by GMOs like the bill and melinda gates foundations

>>7782920
0 confidence. Humans generate entropy more rapidly than any other organism yet to evolve.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKRDvSZ-igA

It's true that all organisms generate entropy, but to do so sustainably requires that the energy used doesn't exceed what comes from the sun. Humans have strayed too far off that path to recover with any dignity.

Take /pol/ for example. They currently have a huge hunting thread in which they're posting pics and competing to see who has the best kill.

Humans have a deeply ingrained need to compete, they have hardly evolved from the pack mentality days of burning witches/hitler, and the vast majority (99%, including, no especially, our glorious leaders) have almost no understanding of these facts and no control over their primal instincts. Add in the fact that we're exceedingly arrogant because we all use technology built by the brightest minds through history and a system that relies on exponential growth to sustain itself, and a Malthusian crash comparable only to that caused by a comet impact or super volcano is inevitable, although likely somewhat more drawn out so the vast majority will experience a much more prolonged demise. Just beware of the /pol/ people, who will delude themselves into thinking whatever they have to to justify their consumption. They're mobilizing, and soon they'll come and show no mercy in their need to consume. The only hope is that they'll go after eachother first and the meek/knowledgeable can stand aside and then mop up whatevers left afterwards, but unfortunately I think we'll all be drawn into their madness.

"As long as we can still travel to the other side of the globe four times a year, we will do it. As long as we can still buy a SUV, we will buy it. This is reality."- Pentti Linkola

We will consume as much as possible and breed as much as the environment will support. If you don't do it, someone else will. In the end we will have a husk of a planet. Only an innovation in our ethics and philosophy, not our technology will facilitate any sort of change to make life sustainable.

>>7784321
> Only an innovation in our ethics

That does not seem likely.

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>>7782920
>confidence do you have in modern society
I laughed until I wept.

>>7782920

The only reason I'm confident that we'll rise to meet these challenges is because we've been having doomsayers talking about the population being unsustainable for a long time.

I remember reading a paper about some mathematician/statistician in the 1930s reporting that billions would be starving by the 1970s because we couldn't support that kind of population, and here we are 40 years later. Food is definitely a problem, but the world doesn't seem to be ending just yet.

>>7785217
They had to breed new crops and revolutionise farming to prevent that famine though. It almost came true.

If we discover a serious renewable source of energy we'll be able to grow food artificially in vertical farms. As far as I'm concerned this is the single thing which will allow us to turn the earth into a filthy human hive.

"Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill." -Nwabudike Morgan

Hard to say, but only an idiot would use a static model to predict future outcomes. Attempting to use current oil production as a basis for predicting the state of the world in 2050 is pointless because there are far too many unpredictable variables and the prediction will undoubtedly be incorrect.

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>>7782920
It is not a problem of modern society, but that of the third world.

Sustainable resources will be more utilized when depletable resources are so scarce, that those are far too expensive. Only then, will we see a rapid shift to renewable energy and the likes.

>>7784046
I take solace in the fact that one of two things will happen:
1. The kid will realize what bullshit his parents are and devote himself fully to truth
2. The kid will die an early death due to genetic and environmental stupidity.

>>7785511

Africa will a hell hole on earth in 50 years...
North/South-American navies will be used to prevent a flood of people from Africa to the Americas.

>>7785511
It's the developed world who is wasting resources. A few westerners consumes as much as a small town of Africans.

>>7784078

The human population is not growing exponentially. It's an S curve, and right now we are at the centre of the S.

Oil may be more energetically difficult to extract and refine these days, but this is somewhat offset by the huge improvements in how efficiently oil is used now as compared to 30/40 years ago. And this is only getting better as technology improves.

>>7785907
And the African world is selling the resources. Blaming any problems solely on the Western world is far too naive and simplistic.

Besides billions are spent each year on development. in fact, my country spends more on helping developing countries than it does on its defense budget.

Scientific advances in the developed world have are helping developing countries. the developed world is taking in countless refugees out of sympathy. Do you think it is reasonable to expect more of Europe and the US?

>>7786346
>Do you think it is reasonable to expect more of Europe and the US?
Actually yes. Stop fucking wasting all the resources on lavish lifestyles.

soon the benevolent hyper advanced aliens -- The Confederation -- will release their supreme Faster Than Light and Free Energy tech to us once we achieve world unity and peace and become a 4D+ society

there will be no more darkness or suffering and we will live in the proverbial Utopia

but we must become a Galactic society first and then we will have all the star trek tech, healing tech, interstellar tech

>>7782920
None. Things will get worse especially for the developing world.

>>7783019
That makes no sense. No matter what we do to earth it couldn't possibly be worse than the moonscape that is mars. We should just terraform earth.

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>>7784290
>Hitler
>bad
Spotted the kike

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>>7784290
> omg noes the ghost of hitler is here !!!
>>>/x/

>>7784290
tl;dr
You are retarded, humans are as mean and destructive as any other animals.
Other animals rape, kill, steal, lie, eat to the edge of resource depletion, destroy, and so on.
The only difference is that we are smarter than other species and therefore are able to dominate all of them.
Also, the Sun emits shitloads of energy, and the global energy consumption represents 1/10000 of it.
The reason we release so much entropy is that we lack the technology to recycle our waste. Biological life has photosynthesis and other stuff to process its waste, we don't. However we are learning to, hopefully not too slowly.

>>7786467
>giving a fuck about shitskin "countries". Sorry but they can starve to death for all I care.

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>>7783016
welcome to /sci/ where the most logical answer is posted first and is completely ignored.

>>7787900
Little precision, we consume 1/10000 of the solar energy we could actually use on Earth.

>>7784290
Hands down the stupidest post of this thread.

>>7783016
>modern agricultural technology
You mean Monsanto? Indian farmers are committing suicide because of their technology.
But I agree that we could produce enough food for the world population.

>>7786467
why ? are you a communist or something ?

>>7787914
>Hurr durr

I hate you faggots so fucking much, Indian farmers suicides go back to the 60's and are caused by lots of different factors, bt cotton uptake being an indirect factor but a better sentence would be

>Poor agricultural policy in India has left cotton farmers highly exposed, this includes costs of pesticides, fertilisers and gm cotton. (cf: Deconstructing Indian cotton: weather, yields, and suicides)


But desu I don't expect a "hurr Monsanto evil" retard like yourself to be able to have a reasoned opinion.

>>7787930
lolwut. whats the deal with indian farmers suiciding ? why suicide ?

>>7787933
Basically poor agricultural policy in India has left certain Indian farmers massively exposed to environmental and market forces, so if they have one poor yield they go bankrupt and then kill themselves.

>>7785685

Not the Americas but Europe.

>>7782920
at some point people will start dying off.
i think this problem will fix itself

>>7787914

This is simply untrue. Indian subsistence farmer suicides were on the rise before the introduction of higher yield GM cotton. To claim otherwise is to peddle a lie cooked up by agricultural luddites like Vandana Shiva, who have a romanticised view of subsistence agriculture.

To be a subsistence farmer is to live a life of unending toil, stress and crippling poverty. With increasing development, mechanisation will replace subsistence farming, thereby freeing millions from a life of toil and increasing agricultural output to feed the planet's growing population.

>>7787943

This. Claiming that Indian farmer suicides are a direct result of Monsanto's seeds, GM or not, is simply false.

>>7783137
Part of the problem with discovery/production charts like that is that anytime new technology/drilling expands the size of an existing field, those new reserves are back dated to when the field was first discovered, even if the original discoverers had no idea there was that much recoverable oil in the field.

>>7782920
i'm white and i live in canada i genuinely couldn't give a fuck about sustainability

>>7784132
>GMOs

Hang on, don't you mean NGOs?

>>7788676
Calling something true false is simply pointless.

>>7785685
That would be racist
We should let them all in so our continent can be ruined too