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138 comments on Jack-2 and the Lower Tertiary of the Deepwater Gulf of Mexico

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Davidyson on September 12, 2006 - 6:51am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Five or ten years gained by new technolgy will help us transition to solar, wind and nuclear so that the world and modern civilisation can survive and prosper.

Sorry, but 5 or ten years more time also means 5 to 10 years more population growth, more arable land degradation and water waste.

If new finds are supposed to make a difference for the transition, they must more than compensate for the rapidly worsening general conditions.

Is there any plan how to make this a dure thing to happen?

My favourite wisdom: "Hoping just means you don't have a plan!"

   Davidyson

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Kevembuangga on September 12, 2006 - 8:26am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
My favourite wisdom: "Hoping just means you don't have a plan!"

Do you have one?

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Davidyson on September 12, 2006 - 8:36am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Good question.

Answer: Only half-way. I am working at it.
I recently did a 3-hour spanish-inquisition-style interview with Ottmar Edenhofer, chief economist of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. One of my questions was if our economic system is really doomed to grow.
He slightly evaded the answer and said something along the lines of "climate-wise, we can probably afford to grow for another one or two decades. After that, we must find something new. I just don't know what."
If he can't figure how to get off the growth addiction as a full-time professional, how could I as an amateur in my leisure time?

But at least I don't buy complacency by the futile way of hoping. (Okay, that's how I see it.)

Cheers,

   Davidyson

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wkwillis on September 13, 2006 - 3:14pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
We could build a Kingsbury-Arnold spaceport. A linear accelerator in orbit that we can use as the second stage of a space launch facility. That drops the cost to orbit to ten dollars a pound and means we can build space colonies and evacuate the planet.
That, or some kind of zero point energy source are the only ways out that I see.
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Roger Arnold on November 5, 2006 - 10:23pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
wkwillis?  One time member of Northwest L5?  If so, greetings from the past.  Nice to see that a few people remember that concept.  For anyone interested, scanned PDF copies of the two-part Analog article from 1979 are online at the website of the last holdouts that I know of from the original L5 Society.  That's the Sacramento L5 Society.

Even in 1979, when Don and I wrote that article, we were both well aware that growth could not continue indefinitely.  I thought of the orbiting spaceport as a kind of conceptual "existance proof" that a spacefaring civilization was possible and economically feasible--provided that the resources to build the required infrastructure could be mobilized.  But it was the capabilities that cheap space transportation enabled that I was interested in--not growth.

There are folks who have been giving serious thought to how to avoid the need for growth at the heart of our current economic system. Google "steady state economics" or variants.

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wkwillis on September 13, 2006 - 3:12pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
"Hope is not a plan" is a snappier way of saying that. I think it's a military saying.
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138 comments on Jack-2 and the Lower Tertiary of the Deepwater Gulf of Mexico

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