Environmentalism and the Coming Resource Shortages

>>8066631
>What are the most correct ethical, moral, and/or scientific solutions or approaches to this?

Space colonization

>>8066631
>dwindling resources
like what?

>>8066658
With remarkable cooperation and a massive increase in NASA's budget this is still a lofty and yet unattainable longer-term goal (say, twenty to fifty years until actualization), What would be a better interim placeholder?

>>8066666
drinkable water
fertile soil
fish
biodiversity
non-renewable resources

>>8066631
>overpopulation, dwindling resources
genetically engineered animal/plant farms

>water supplies are
Desalination

>>8066682
>genetically engineered animal/plant farms
Which only bolsters overpopulation and exacerbates the problem, not alleviating it

>Desalination
Inherently an extraordinarily expensive and energy-exhaustive process per liter of water produced.

>>8066695
>Which only bolsters overpopulation and exacerbates the problem, not alleviating it
We have a lot of space on Earth for more people, outside of Western society, and we will have the food to feed them. Also, if overpopulation becomes a problem, policies that forbid excessive reproduction will be set in place.

>Inherently an extraordinarily expensive and energy-exhaustive process per liter of water produced.
The alternative is no water. Which one do you think is a more likely scenario?

>>8066714
>policies that forbid excessive reproduction will be set in place.

How would said policies be implimented? How would they be enforced? Who would enforce them? What would be the punishment of infringing these maxims? Who becomes the arbitrator of the allocation of resources to whom?

>Which one do you think is a more likely scenario?
Regional conflict, international unrest, resource wars, and an unraveling of the progress of humanity from sustaining its existence via advancement to existing and survival in a primitive state

>>8066695
>Which only bolsters overpopulation
Found your problem right there OP.
Your cynical outlook has blinded you to the obvious.
Human population growth peaked in the early 1960's, at 2.2% per year.
We're currently down to half that, and if current trends continue, human population will begin shrinking during the 21st century.

So have a beer and stop being so gloomy.

>>8066672
Improved water purification techniques I.e. make seawater drinkable on a very large scale

>>8066726
>How would said policies be implimented? How would they be enforced? Who would enforce them? What would be the punishment of infringing these maxims?
>What is one child policy

>Who becomes the arbitrator of the allocation of resources to whom?
How can I answer that without making up a whole new future society in my mind? Your question will be answered when we reach the point in time where such thoughts are tangible.

>Regional conflict, international unrest, resource wars, and an unraveling of the progress of humanity from sustaining its existence via advancement to existing and survival in a primitive state
>War
>instead of improving technology and paying more money

I think you've read one too many sci-fi books.

>>8066737
I want to believe, however the destruction of tenable food supplies, the acidification of the oceans, the unthawing of Siberia and the melting of the icecaps all posit a very dire outlook for the sustainability of culture and human civilization as we currently know it; all of which are happening right now, and runaway warming is almost a certainty attenuated by a myriad of research and studies into the matter

>>8066741
This is a lofty platitude and serves no utility more than saying "we should alleviate world poverty and sickness"

>>8066680
>>8066695
first of all. from a conservation of mass standpoint, earth is pretty much a closed system. all the stuff that was here a million years ago is still here except for the miniscule bits we've shot into space.

second, the engineering solutions to all these problems have been hashed out for decades. we could literally "fix" climate change if we wanted to. however, it requires the collective will to put it into place and raises alot of political questions that make people uncomfortable. for example, if we did build a global carbon control infrastructure, who controls it? because according to the scientists, whoever controls the carbon, controls the weather.

now imagine we create this same sort of infrastructure for all the other problems you listed. it puts planetary engineering controls into the hands of a select group of individuals.

we aren't ready for that.

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>>8066749
>I want to believe,
...ok...
>all posit a very dire outlook for the sustainability of culture and human civilization as we currently know it
...no.
You DON'T want to believe. You're exaggerating the issues and leaping to implausible worst-case results.

>>8066631
We can burn fuel in stellerators once they are to capacity.

>>8066631
The most correct is to spread education on this subject and attatch with the message a solution.
Something like...
"One of you holds the key to saving everyone..." thus setting everyones mind collectively on space travel, escaping the solar system, stellerators, producing more oxygen from water, using energy to make underground farms and cities etc

>>8066859
Perhaps not a solution per say but a range of options that can save the entirety of humanity or buy us more time.

>>8066754
>global carbon control infrastructure
can you forward me any sources on this? I'm interested.

>>8066862
oh man, there are volumes of stuff about this. just google carbon sequestering or "power to gas". I have a PDF of a feasibility study the US Navy did on ship board carbon capture technology thats really interesting.

they were trying to figure out a way to make jet fuel at sea using the excess energy of the carriers reactor. the system was shit at making jet fuel, but pretty good at just suckin' up carbon.

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>>8066737
>human population will begin shrinking during the 21st century
For sure, but not because of lack of sex and babies. Fossil fuel depletion is my guess since we eat oil now, if disease or plague doesn't come first.

>>8066741
The technology that converts saline water into fresh water is really bad for the environment as well.

>>8067324
At this rate, we'll be able to transition to renewable energy before we run out of fossil fuels. Sorry about your teenage angst not being reflected by reality.

>>8067398
We need oil for industrial agriculture
>machinery
>fertilizer
>pesticides
>transport

You cannot just exchange everything with "renewable energy" and continue as we do now

As soon as cheap oil is over, modern agriculture is over. Important is the "cheap".
Oil doesn't have to empty for that to happen, just not as readily available as it is today.

Also we are rapidly losing topsoil
Either we start farming practices that build top soil and soil live or we lose our ecosystem productivity and most people will simply starve

Oh, also the phosphorus are rapidly depleted

It's sustainable agriculture or death of civilization.

Permaculture is a viable solution, if it is implemented fast enough and on a big scale.

>>8067450
It's pretty much subjective. Being able to shitpost on a Mongolian image board already implies you are in the top 1% of useless eaters. I think a few billion already go to bed hungry now, it's a problem that corrects itself really.

>>8067556
Funny thing is
It will hit most industrialized and urbanized areas the worst.
Some south American mountain village is going to get enough food just fine.
People in London, New York, Tokio, Paris... having to survive without the supermarkets being filled up?
Have fun

>>8067604
Yeah except our ag tech is improving exponentially while you envirotards have been concern trolling over phosphorus for decades. Face it: we solved famine, and remaining hunger in the world is a political issue.

>>8067610
havent you read >>8067450
ag techs weak point is it's dependence on cheap oil
no cheap oil, no fancy ag tech

>>8067616
As our technology improves in other areas, our dependence on oil for non-agricultural usage decreases. That gives us CENTURIES to implement solutions to problems that we already have solutions for. As the price of oil increases, we will gradually make use of those solutions.

We will get electric tractors and trains long before oil is in short supply. We can genetically engineer plants to make their own pesticides and perform nitrogen fixation. This is technology that is just barely unaffordable in 2016 with $50/barrel oil.

>>8066754
>>8066869
>first of all. from a conservation of mass standpoint, earth is pretty much a closed system.
Only in the most pedantic, unhelpful sense.
If I ran all your possessions through a blender and give you the pile back, technically you wouldn't have lost any material. You'd still be pissed about it.

>second, the engineering solutions to all these problems have been hashed out for decades.
That doesn't mean they actually WORK.

>we could literally "fix" climate change if we wanted to.
>just google carbon sequestering or "power to gas". I have a PDF of a feasibility study the US Navy did on ship board carbon capture technology thats really interesting.
Yeah, no.
Just because a carbon capture system works on a benchtop doesn't mean we can just scale it up and go home. Capturing carbon from the air is incredibly difficult, and the global emission rate is fucking huge. To capture a significant fraction of human emissions would require our entire industrial output. The only "carbon capture" system that's actually effective at a useful scale is not digging the carbon up in the first place.

>for example, if we did build a global carbon control infrastructure, who controls it? because according to the scientists, whoever controls the carbon, controls the weather.
Do you actually have a clue what you're talking about?

>>8067324
>but not because of lack of sex and babies
YES, BECAUSE OF SEX AND BABIES.
Re-read my original post:
>>8066737
>Human population growth peaked in the early 1960's, at 2.2% per year.
>We're currently down to half that, and if current trends continue, human population will begin shrinking during the 21st century.
Even without your gloomy predictions, CURRENT TRENDS are already headed for negative population growth in the near future.

>>8066859
Sounds gay.

>>8067694
Environmentalists still believe that non-white people are incapable of having low birth rates. They're completely immune to scientific reasoning or evidence.

>>8067815
>Environmentalists still believe that non-white people are incapable of having low birth rates.
>They're completely immune to scientific reasoning or evidence.
What?
No.

>>8067842
Why do you believe that human population growth is exponential and will not level off?

>>8067868
I think you're confused; I don't believe that at all.

>>8066631
Getting rid of elites.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800914000615

Seriously though, what would you guys do if you suddenly couldn't go to the store and get food anymore? Maybe you should start thinking about that.

>>8066631
Not a shortage of resources, a bad allocation of resources
Consider, in the US we use potable water to flush toilets, water lawns, wash cars, great use of drinking water

As far as overpopulation, nature always balances out, and man likes to help, monsoon's, earthquakes, tornadoes, volcanoes, war, famine, newly emerging diseases, plauge

The Earth routinely manages to destroy almost all life, and mankind likes to try and do it to

After 50 years of life, I no longer worry about it, I enjoy the time I have and make the best of what I have earned, I have no control over macro level events and too little time left to spend worrying about them

>>8068251
>Seriously though, what would you guys do if you suddenly couldn't go to the store and get food anymore?
That's not realistically going to happen.

>>8068322
Dodging the question. Don't want to think about it?

>>8068327
Fine, I've thought about it and it sounds unpleasant. Done.
What point exactly are you trying to make here?

>>8066631
Recognize that Malthus is wrong. The best way to reduce and reverse population growth is to raise people out of poverty. Also feminism is important, aka the full emancipation of women, and especially giving them control over their fertility ala easy access to contraception, and giving women opportunities in the culture outside of being a house wife.

Most western countries already have a negative population growth if you exclude immigration and account for increasing age expectancies.

And the best (and currently) only way to supply that needed energy is nuclear, such as IFR and ThorCon.

>>8068327
Why do you think I watch Walking Dead?

>>8068322
There was a truck strike in GB due to rising fuel prices in 2000.
Very few deliveries came in, many supermarkets were running out of food.
The country was like 2 or 3 days away from a major food crisis.
Mind you, everything else was working, just the trucks stopped moving and some refineries were blocked.
If our logistic system stops working smoothly for whatever reason, the supermarkets are empty within a week.
Most people don't have food stored for more than a week or two.
Then the fun begins.

To think that there will be no problems with the food supply, just because there weren't any for the last 70 years is just ignorant.

Protip: if everything else fails, eat gras. It's what many people did who survived famine in WWII.

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>>8068322
>it can't happen because I say it won't happen

>>8066765
>destruction of tenable food supplies
>acidification of the oceans
>unthawing of Siberia
>melting of the icecaps
>implausible worst-case results
Oh, boy.
You do realize that all those things are happening right now, and will become increasingly worse in the future, right?

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>>8068322
>being this out of touch with reality

>>8068739
I'd not heard of that truck strike, that's interesting.
However, I'm not really sure it shows a non-catastrophic scenario that could lead to a complete exhaustion of food.
For something similar to that to occur without the possibility of simply re-starting the trucks, a significant part of the country would have to already be completely fucked. Short of WWIII, I don't see it.

>>8068756
>>8068894
What event do you think could possible cause us (ie, relatively wealthy people in mostly functional countries) to completely run out of food? I'm not aware of any.

>>8068911
>What event do you think could possible cause us to completely run out of food
We're not talking about running out of food as a whole, but running out of certain important products, which could easily happen due to overexploitation, and directly and indirectly due to global warming. Less resources means less food; even developed countries could suffer from a shortage of supplies in such a scenario.

>>8068911
these people do not understand markets

they take their scenario, give it an end point, and claim thats it. forever

demand and supply never factor

>>8068947
such as?

the minute gasoline became unavailable after hurricane sandy, craigslist suddenly became the biggest distributor of petroleum in new england

>>8068947
>We're not talking about running out of food as a whole, but running out of certain important products, which could easily happen due to overexploitation,
I'm under the impression that most things won't "run out" in the sense the tap stops and there's no more. They're just going to get more and more difficult and expensive to extract.

>Less resources means less food; even developed countries could suffer from a shortage of supplies in such a scenario.
A shortage of food wouldn't badly affect me - I'd just end up paying more. The real issue is what would happen to people who can't actually afford to pay significantly more for food.

>>8068251
>what would you guys do if you suddenly couldn't go to the store and get food anymore?

Order pizza

>>8068947
>running out of certain important products
Oh the important products. Thanks for reminding me, I have to go buy 3 liters of important products today because I'm almost out.

Man big IP is really having our balls in a vice don't they? whew.

>>8067658
>That doesn't mean they actually WORK.
you are pretty fucking ignorant m8.

we don't extract it from the air, we extract it from the ocean and use the natural concentration gradient and huge surface area of the ocean as an enormous carbon sink.

we can get 1kg CO2/7 MJ. thats really good. please tell me about all the research you've done in carbon capture because i worked for motherfucking NREL.

>>8069143
>we extract it from the ocean
Rainwater(and riverwater, as it originates more recently from rain) have a higher CO2 content than the oceans.

>we can get 1kg CO2/7 MJ.

US emissions of carbon dioxide equivalents are 7709 million tonnes = 7 709 000 kg

7 709 000 million MegaJoules is 2.14 million GWh.

US electricity production is 4.3 million GWH.

So to sequester the CO2 produced in the states alone you'd need to increase the electricity production by 50%. Without increasing emissions. That's building 1945 new topaz solar power plants.

I hope you see the problems. And I'd have expected someone who worked for motherfucking NREL to do a napkin calculation and realize the prohibitive aspects before shitposting about it.

>>8069171
>7 709 000 kg
7 709 000 million kgs, forgot an M there.

>>8069171
>That's building 1945 new topaz solar power plants.

or a handful of massive solar installations. run the numbers on how much surface area you need and the $/kWh of solar and you will see that its a completely feasible concept.

>>8069202
>or a handful of massive solar installations

Topaz solar is the third largest in the world. Was the largest early last year.

> run the numbers
I've done it previously, there's nations with smaller area than what's required.

>its a completely feasible concept.
A mars and lunar colony is trivial in comparison.

>>8069213
the point is we can still do it, and it wouldn't take the gross energy output of the world to get it done. it takes me back to my first statement of climate change being a political problem, not a technological one. would it be expensive? yeah. would it bankrupt our country? no.

>>8069243
>the point is we can still do it
Theoretically, but we could do a lot theoretically like solving world hunger and having a peacfull happy global village, practically it's a pipedream.

That you seem to think it as something practically feasible means you're detached from the mechanisms of society.

>>8069243
>would it be expensive? yeah. would it bankrupt our country? no.
Even the more batshit renewables plans can promise a better deal that "it might not bankrupt us all".

>the point is we can still do it
No, the point is that it's a terrible solution compared to simply not digging buried carbon up in the first place.