Worlds For Man - Part 3 - Earth
Earth, as our homeworld, is already habitable. The problem is that our polluting activities are “de-terraforming” her, rendering her less habitable and destroying the biological riches that are our world’s evolutionary heritage. Our immediate task in managing the Earth’s future is to slow, stop, and eventually reverse this process of
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Short-term:
I like the way you handle energy, but there are several problems with it. First, the necessary economic upheaval that would happen if short-term. Crazed Muslims are bad enough, but antagonizing a region of terrorism is kind of dangerous.
The material for nuclear products will have to be mined, which leaves a major environmental footprint.
Milespires cause irrational concentrations of both population and power, so human extinction is more of a risk. You cannot plan for everything. If a disaster strikes a city, it recovers. If it strikes a building, it crumbles.
Your farming idea, which I like and support, faces a major problem in that it becomes a focal point for massive carbon-dioxide/oxygen emission which could create runaway weather disasters if a mistake is made.
Sapience is iffy, and slavery would be the most likely result. Social Darwinism would have a massive revival.
Thermal pollution in a deep sea environment might cause a potential problem, as well as political isolation between humans and selkies.
Anything with electromagnetics or ionic propulsion suffers rapid decay which we currently do not have an answer for (not really a problem, just pointing it out).
Middle/Long Term:
Biggest issue is post-Singularity society is impossible to predict, if it can manifest at all.
Other issue is Earth most likely one of the few complex bioplanets in the universe, simply because of the difficulty of matching its "perfect" biocondtions. Terraforming is pointless and impossible unless you can form solar systems, and to a lesser extent galaxies.
WHEW!
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At this proper time since the Big Bang. Let me borrow a heuristic analysis from Francis Crick's refutation of panspermia (Charles Pelligrino, Ghosts of Vesuvius).
Tacitly assuming that an AI-search abiogenesis process does emerge from the laws of physics: the solar system has about 50% more astronomical metals (elements heavier than lithium) than is typical for a star its age.
(~4.7 billion years since last supernova, per absence of natural isotopes not generated locally with a half-life of 470 million years or less.)
So it seems plausible that Earth is among the first worlds with iron sulfide based metabolism. But, it is unclear how long a "snowball earth" period is actually needed.
- Oxygen photosynthesis: estimated 2.7 billion years ago
- Iron precipitation to hematite/oxygen crisis: band starting estimated 2.45 billion years ago
- Snowball Earth (equatorial glaciation): estimated 2.4 billion years - 647 million years, latter date has hard geology marker (calcium carbonate layer with lowest C13/C12 ratio suggesting minimal biospheric concentration of C12) and is start of Ediacaran/Vendian era
It is very unclear a priori what the fastest reasonable timeframe for the biosphere to end Snowball Earth is. I'd be surprised if 1.75 billion years is "near-optimal".Reply
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By "short term" I mean over the next several decades, rather than years. The Arabs will sell their oil to progressively poorer regions of the world, or to the last holdouts against nuclear power, before nuclear power becomes so widespread that oil is useful mainly as feedstock.
By the end of the current crisis (the Terror Wars) (*) the principle will be firmly established (probably on the smoking, neutron-emitting ruins of Iran and Pakistan) that backing terrorists is equivalent to an act of war. As a result, terrorism will be subject to the same dynamics of deterrence as any other military strategy.
Buying something one doesn't need from a weaker Power or group of Powers to placate them is a very foolish form of appeasement. I see very little political support for doing this in the Developed World.
We've always known that someday the Arabs and Iranians would find themselves sitting on what was again only semi-valuable black goop: that was written the moment the first commercial nuclear power plant opened. The next several decades will see this happen. Tough for them, but they had their time of economic glory.
The material for nuclear products will have to be mined, which leaves a major environmental footprint.
The tonnage of fissionables needed to be mined is not great, and the system can thus be segregated from the general environment without unacceptable costs. The big advantage of nuclear over chemical power systems is that the fuel lasts a lot longer.
Milespires cause irrational concentrations of both population and power, so human extinction is more of a risk. You cannot plan for everything. If a disaster strikes a city, it recovers. If it strikes a building, it crumbles.
Unless the disaster is truly immense, it only strikes at most one milespire at a time. For instance, a single kilotons-range tactical nuclear missile could at most destroy a single such structure, if they were separated by miles. I was not arguing that we would pack the whole human population into one milespire, though it could be done if the building were big enough.
This article wasn't long enough for me to go into all the details of mature milespire architecture, but it included a reinforced buffer between the above-ground and the deep-subterranean parts of the structure, so that if the whole surface portion of the building fell down it would not crush its own sub-basements. The sub-basements included blast shelters, intended to allow survival of the occupants in the case of war or impacts. Most of the food gardens, heavy fabs and power systems were in the sub-basements, so the occupants could survive indefinitely (in crowded, uncomfortable shelter quarters) until rescue arrived from outside (or they decided to leave via the tubes).
The science fiction future I originally created them for (the Mandate) included occasional nuclear civil wars, so these were important features!
Your farming idea, which I like and support, faces a major problem in that it becomes a focal point for massive carbon-dioxide/oxygen emission which could create runaway weather disasters if a mistake is made.
Because it's indoors, the gas exchange systems can be essentially segregated from the external atmosphere. Also, I'm postulated increased human understanding of and ability to control planetary climate as time passes.
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(*) I'm guessing around 2017 to 2020 will see the culmination of this cycle of wars.
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Good point, I personally would love to see the First World just smashing those arrogant fools with our imperial might by 2017-2020! Huzzah!
The tonnage of fissionables needed to be mined is not great, and the system can thus be segregated from the general environment without unacceptable costs. The big advantage of nuclear over chemical power systems is that the fuel lasts a lot longer.
Which is why the First World should decommission its older nukes for energy purposes, which would help alleviate this problem.
Unless the disaster is truly immense, it only strikes at most one milespire at a time.
I'm not necessarily talking about external disasters here. Internal disasters, caused by either spies from other Milespires (I tend to see them as countries) or social discontent from putting so many people relatively close together.
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I don't see the point of this unless you mean to replace them with newer nuclear reactors ... there are plenty of unmined fissionables in the existing mines, let alone in potential new ones. The goal is to increase the percentage of national power derived from nuclear reactors. And in the long run, we will also have access to extraterrestrial fissionables if we want them, and be able to use deuterium and tritium or tri-helium as fusion fuels.
I'm not necessarily talking about external disasters here. Internal disasters, caused by either spies from other Milespires (I tend to see them as countries) or social discontent from putting so many people relatively close together.
If society has fissioned into thousands and thousands of warring small city-states, that would be a very bad thing regardless of the form of architecture employed by these states! Crowding is in relation to available land area: the milespire form multiplies available land area tremendously. You may not have noticed it, but in all but the "spartan" sample milespire, the effective living quarters of each individual were mansion-sized. The "spartan" milespire, containing 1 million people, crowded them no more than is common in current cities.
And if they want fresh air, all they need to do is take the express elevator to the ground floor and go for a walk in the woods ... which are more accessible to them than is the case in current cities. Furthermore, they have advanced equivalents of the internet, aircars and the subway tubes if they want variety other than of their local woods.
So no, I don't see going stir-crazy from being cooped up in a "little" apartment as being a big problem.
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I'd call the experiments with the other great apes, which have included the mirror test and extensive sign-language conversations, pretty conclusive. Even if you want to argue that wild apes aren't sapient, it's fairly obvious that Washoe, Koko, Kanzi et al are. Pepperberg's experiments with Alex and other African Gray parrots have been dramatically successful: Alex frequently initiates conversations and makes intellectual leaps, learning principles in advance of his training.
Beyond the great apes and African Gray parrots, we are finding signs of higher-than-expected intelligence throughout birds and mammals. Not (with the possible exception of the orcas) equal to our own, but approaching it in many cases. Even the stupider birds and mammals (passerines, ungulates etc.) are turning out to be smarter than we thought (though not sapient).
... and slavery would be the most likely result.
Sadly, yes ... unless we manage to overcome our darker tendencies in some Awakening.
Social Darwinism would have a massive revival.
Indeed.
Thermal pollution in a deep sea environment might cause a potential problem, as well as political isolation between humans and selkies.
Yes, and yes. Thermal pollution is in general going to be a problem, which is one reason primary industry moves offworld. And there might be obvious conflicts of interest between land-dwellers and selkies ... and between selkies and other sapient marine life, especially the orcas. It's anyone's guess how this might be resolved.
Other issue is Earth most likely one of the few complex bioplanets in the universe, simply because of the difficulty of matching its "perfect" biocondtions. Terraforming is pointless and impossible unless you can form solar systems, and to a lesser extent galaxies.
The terraforming I'm discussing in this series of posts is of other planets and moons in our Solar System. The worlds I see as amenable to terraforming are mainly the inner-system terrestrials: Mars, Luna, Mercury, and Venus (in order of increasing difficulty). On Earth, the challenge is to prevent de-terraforming due to accumulated pollution and other environmental damage.
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I think you are confusing terms here. Sentience is intelligence, while sapience is the ability to make decisions based on intelligent thought. Both would be necessary.
On Earth, the challenge is to prevent de-terraforming due to accumulated pollution and other environmental damage.
Or thermonuclear war with the Middle East. Y'know, just in case.
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"Sapience" is the ability to think about thinking, to have concepts of the past and future. We know for sure that the other great apes and the African Grey parrot have reached this level of intelligence. It is likely that some monkeys (i.e. capuchins), all proboscids (elephants), and many if not all pscitticines (parrots/parakeets etc.), corvids (crows, ravens, jays etc.), and ceteceans (especially delphinids) are also this capable.
This is a rapidly developing field of study, and it seems that every time we look at animal intelligence, we are finding them to be smarter than we previously believed. The key development is the waning of the taboo against "anthromorphizing" their behavior, and the willingness to report honestly the behavior being observed. In other words, we were in part seeing animals as stupid because we were preconceiving them as behaving in rote, purely instinctual manners.
Whether this leads to the gradual integration of the smarter animals into human society as wards, or their exploitation as slaves, is up to us. We, after all, are the ones with the advanced military technology -- even the strongest elephant is helpless before a man with an automatic rifle.
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