Concerning the second part of your comment, I tend to think our resource and energy consumption has good chances of dooming us before we get a chance to “escape” at the Solar level system. I am also sceptical of anything that sounds like a Dyson sphere…
The “has good chances of dooming us” unfortunately isn’t a good sign that you have thought a lot about the problem. What resource and energy consumption are you thinking of and why specifically do you believe it means ‘doom’?
Just taking a top level view:
a. Most of the earth’s surface and underwater have not yet been exploited for minerals. (underwater isn’t cost effective, deep enough mines are not cost effective, entire continents are too cold, Siberia has vast wealth but is too cold, and so on). “Not cost effective” doesn’t mean it’s impractical or that mining companies wouldn’t develop the technology to do it once it’s needed—it means that there are easier, competing sources for minerals that have to be exhausted first, however long that takes.
b. Energy is abundant, the squabble right now is that fossil fuels are cheaper if it’s externalities are ignored. If fossil fuels had their externalities priced in, we would already be using solar/wind/nuclear in whatever combination is most efficient.
c. In the timescales that matter, resources are inexhaustible*. There are hundreds of millions of billions of years of sunlight remaining, and every item “consumed” by a human is heaped mainly into landfills, where all of the elements remain, it is simply a matter of energy (and better robotics) to recover them.
d. We do have a major problem with greenhouse gases. But this problem isn’t an “extinction of humanity” level problem, it is a “major real estate markdown and possibly mass destruction and death in equatorial regions”. There are colder areas of the planet that would become inhabitable in the worst warming scenario, or even more extreme measures could be taken to keep first world residents alive. (food grown in algae tanks, etc). It’s an oncoming tragedy but I don’t see the evidence the assume extinction is on the table.
*with the sole exception of helium
I don’t see any reason to look further. Do you have any evidence to disprove a-d or is this something you just read somewhere and you have not examined critically?
Concerning the second part of your comment, I tend to think our resource and energy consumption has good chances of dooming us before we get a chance to “escape” at the Solar level system. I am also sceptical of anything that sounds like a Dyson sphere…
The “has good chances of dooming us” unfortunately isn’t a good sign that you have thought a lot about the problem. What resource and energy consumption are you thinking of and why specifically do you believe it means ‘doom’?
Just taking a top level view:
a. Most of the earth’s surface and underwater have not yet been exploited for minerals. (underwater isn’t cost effective, deep enough mines are not cost effective, entire continents are too cold, Siberia has vast wealth but is too cold, and so on). “Not cost effective” doesn’t mean it’s impractical or that mining companies wouldn’t develop the technology to do it once it’s needed—it means that there are easier, competing sources for minerals that have to be exhausted first, however long that takes.
b. Energy is abundant, the squabble right now is that fossil fuels are cheaper if it’s externalities are ignored. If fossil fuels had their externalities priced in, we would already be using solar/wind/nuclear in whatever combination is most efficient.
c. In the timescales that matter, resources are inexhaustible*. There are hundreds of millions of billions of years of sunlight remaining, and every item “consumed” by a human is heaped mainly into landfills, where all of the elements remain, it is simply a matter of energy (and better robotics) to recover them.
d. We do have a major problem with greenhouse gases. But this problem isn’t an “extinction of humanity” level problem, it is a “major real estate markdown and possibly mass destruction and death in equatorial regions”. There are colder areas of the planet that would become inhabitable in the worst warming scenario, or even more extreme measures could be taken to keep first world residents alive. (food grown in algae tanks, etc). It’s an oncoming tragedy but I don’t see the evidence the assume extinction is on the table.
*with the sole exception of helium
I don’t see any reason to look further. Do you have any evidence to disprove a-d or is this something you just read somewhere and you have not examined critically?