P&N Input: What's in store for us 50 years from now?

[brandonb]

50 years from now.

Some black former pro wrestler trying to put gatorade on plants to make them grow. It's what plants crave.

 

[cwjerome]

I'm assuming Red is referring to unmanned missions, and I think that the kind of missions he mentioned are probably about the only thing NASA will be doing for the next few decades at the rate they're going.

There are some interesting unmanned missions in various stages of planning including the Mars Science Laboratory, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, the GRAIL mission, the Europa Jupiter System mission, the Rossetta probe, the NuSTAR observatory, and the CALISTO mission.

I highly support space exploration and advancement but I'm not against some basic austerity measures right now to include limiting most manned flight for the time being.

 

[cwjerome]

0. Creativity is widely available, as is intelligence. The majority of your at-risk kids may have home life issues, and be getting screwed by the school system, but that only matters for standard academics. I would even go as far as to say that the at-risk groups may in fact have a larger concentration of natural critical thinkers and highly creative types, that simply can't manage doing what they're told, when they're told to do bullshit. So, anonymously share what they came up, OK?

I was a little surprised at some of the "outside-the-box" thinking, which could be partly due to the fact they have limited prior knowledge and maybe haven't been completely brainwashed by cold hard "reality" to ground their imaginations. One example is to to build powerplants on top of certain volcanoes. Well that's fairly far-fetched but the idea of geothermal energy sources and potential for their use is a great concept. It's a starting point, it makes you think, it opens doors for new ideas and possibilities... and that's all I really want to promote. Some of the best ideas have come from pretty weird thoughts.

But perhaps the most significant thing -for me- is the overall sense of future and the hope and expectation that we create worlds... we can affect change and control our destiny. It's this assumption that we will conquer obstacles that I find tremendous, almost a childlike optimism that got me to thinking that we so severely need young people, who have this future-oriented attitude that older people tend to lose as they age, whose time is coming and they just don't have as much of a stake.

1. Food, food, food; water, water, water. Even now, we're over-fishing and plankton are not as abundant as they used to be. Corn and soy are helping to destroy the Gulf of Mexico, and California is at the brink of facing a water crisis--let people drink, or let their food drink. This is not isolated the US, I just know more about my own country's major problems. Without taking in any other GW factors, we will see food shortages, probably well before 50 years. Maybe we'll start mass-producing cheap chlorella, or something.

Markets adjust, people change, and societies are dynamic enough to slowly ward off cataclysmic disaster, because it doesn't happen overnight. It's in our nature to dream big and solve problems. Expect much more small scale urbanized agriculture and that will drastically reduce water usage and transportation costs. We have been dealing with hungry people since the beginning and it will continue to be a problem, but we are nowhere near the carrying capacity because the very concept of carrying capacity keeps going up, as it has for 5000 years. Every time we imagine we're at the end we progress. With the hyper explosion of information and technology in the last 50 years, why would people think we'd stop coming up with new ideas, processes, and practices?

Going out on a limb: if the ME uprisings succeed well at their peace, I could even see a ME leader (progressive Muslim of some sort) spear-heading the effort. However crazy it may seem, at first, if a leader, that isn't a backstabbing asshole, can get both Palestinian and Israeli common people on the same side--it will take a Middle Easterner, who intuitively understands the cultures involved, and realizes that working with the governments will lead to failure--those in leadership positions that profit from the constant carnage/stalemate would be wholly and completely fucked. Getting ME peace would immediately make this person a trustworthy figure the world over, to the point that I can imagine someone trying to do it specifically so that it could be a political stepping stone for them.

Interesting and optimistic prediction. I am not so sure, but I do think 3 things are involved in pulling the greater ME region up. Heavy pressures from the first world, progressive leadership arising internally in the region, and time... lots of time. Long term I am optimistic, as bumpy as the road might be.

 

[desy]

Technology based on oil to feed the masses, without it, no diesel no herbacides insecticides fertalizers the carry capacity of the earth before fossil fuels was about 1.5 billion people

 

[Cerb]

Markets adjust, people change, and societies are dynamic enough to slowly ward off cataclysmic disaster, because it doesn't happen overnight. It's in our nature to dream big and solve problems. Expect much more small scale urbanized agriculture and that will drastically reduce water usage and transportation costs. We have been dealing with hungry people since the beginning and it will continue to be a problem, but we are nowhere near the carrying capacity because the very concept of carrying capacity keeps going up, as it has for 5000 years. Every time we imagine we're at the end we progress. With the hyper explosion of information and technology in the last 50 years, why would people think we'd stop coming up with new ideas, processes, and practices?

Not one cataclysmic disaster, but small-scale ones, building up over time in their frequency and severity, as infrastructure can't keep up. I would hold that we already have exceeded our carrying capacity. It's not that the planet might not have the theoretical resources, but for that last 20 years, of not longer, we have been using resources faster than we can replenish or replace them, on a large scale. Up until now, carrying capacity has not been limited by having plants and animals available, but by the ability to hunt or cultivate them. We are ruining soil, we are ruining deltas, we are overfishing, etc.. We will not hit a wall overnight, and there will be stop-gaps, but we would need a miracle to be able to keep up.

Urbanized agriculture, FI, might reduce transportation costs, but it won't reduce consumption (the reduced consumption will quickly be eaten up by the increased demand). It will be a way to manage to keep up with increased consumption, but can only hope to promise the moon if we expect magic fairy dust to fertilize it, power, and irrigate it. The amount of water treatment, exposed space to grow crops, and oil needed to keep it working will still be going up, as the population's needs increase, while oil, and any resources that rely on it (practically everything) go up in cost. Without a miracle-replacement for oil, and plenty of riches, how are you going to keep it growing? Just as importantly, who is going to start implementing possible fixes many years before a crisis?