Cherenkov,

Now feeling all warm and fuzzy with a boost of confidence by you evaluation of my post as evidence of a "semi-intelligent understanding of the rhetorical arts" that is at least amusing, I could not resist a reply, and one to say that I found in your reply post evidence that I do agree with you a bit more than you may think (I would not dare say that "we agree" knowing that saying you agree with anyone would be presumption on my part).

I agree absolutely with your sentence, "If you fail to consider technology without considering the world around you, you are a fool."
Exactly true.

The inverse of it is also true by the way: "If you fail to consider the world around you without considering technology, you are a fool."

Because if technology can be used, someone, somewhere WILL try to use it, and thus the effects of their technology will have to be calculated into the effects on your world. You or I alone do not get to make the decision as to "whether or not" to go ahead with a technology. Isn't it fun sharing a planet?

"What is the long-term future of a technological society in light of finite resources, global climate change, the oceans dying, population growth, and fresh water shortages?"

Cherenkov, you must see why I viewed the question as rhetorical: If you make a list of five bad items, then ask, "what is the sum?", there is only one answer isn't there? bad X 5=bad. The structure of the question gives no other possible answer. It is the nature of a rhetorical question that the question itself provides the answer.

But if we take each point individually, and allow for more items to be added to the list, or some to be discounted for the moment while we deal with the ones we can have the greatest effect on, we have not a dead end rhetorical argument, but possible improvements in the situation, at least for a foreseeable amount of time, and by the way, we have to put a time frame on things. I do not know if you can, but I cannot deal with the variables 500 years from now, the conditions will almost certainly be too far removed from any reality I can know (Columbus did not spend a great amount of time thinking about the effect of traffic jams on North America when he found it!)

Just to play around though, and assuming you intended the question to be real and not rhetorical, let's look at "the question" remaining:

"What is the long-term future of a technological society in light of finite resources, global climate change, the oceans dying, population growth, and fresh water shortages?"
Let's look at the next century, out to about 2107, that being about the end of lifetime for even a baby boomers grandchildren, easily midlife for his or her great grandchildren.

Now we have some tough questions on the issues you describe:
Finite resources-This is a given. But we don't know how finite. Should we attempt to find out? We don't know where they are? Should we stay hard at work on international arrangements to find out and fairly distribute resources? Notice that both of these questions sound rhetorical! The answer seems to be yes to both, at least to most people. But both would require at least some degree of technology, for communications and Earth science monitoring, wouldn't they? Recycling to avoid waste? One would think so. Alternative methods of construction and production to reduce consumption of resources to do the same job? One would think so. But again, we are into some elegant technological solutions if we can find them.

The Earth's rescources are indeed limited. However, we do recieve a major outside source of energy from the sun. Can it be used to help us? One would think so. Can solar energy can be used in combination with Earth bound resources? One would think so. Would it be possible to do at all if we dismantle anything similiar to a technical society? Not on any scale to make life decent for billions of people.

Climate change: We play the same game out: The climate changes with or without human activity, science tells us this, but human activity can make it worse and exceed what the Earth can adjust to. But does it have to? If technology can be developed that is for the most part (it will never be perfect) carbon neutral, would it be acceptable, or would it be renounced on philosophical grounds that it is, in fact, technology?

Population growth: Is it a given? It is always interesting that Malthusian intellectuals show a graph, something like "population growth since the discovery of oil", and sure enough, up it goes. However, medical and chemical birth control was born only in the 1960's (!). Population growth is a RISK, but not a given over the long haul. What will the populatin growth curve look like as real and modern birth control makes it's way throughout the world for the first time in human history (!)? Who knows.

Ocean's dying and fresh water shortages: I have grouped these together for one reason: Most of the damage to fresh water and oceans seems to be as much a problem of bad or lacking technology, not technology in general, and most have been caused by stupidity and greed. There is no real indication yet that these are not easily technically managable if we want to make the effort. We may not do it. We may choose, as we have done up to now, to treat oceans and freshwater sources as dumps. That is not a technical problem, it is an issue of choices made by humans for political and economic reasons.
_____

Note that I have not went off on any "Buck Rogers" fantasies. But space is still out there. Humans have proven they can go. The deep oceans are still out there. Humans are proving they can go. Fusion does work in nature. Can humans harness it? Who knows, and it may not happen quick enough to be of real help, inside our 2017 window.

But as you can see Cherenkov, we have enough "homework" assignments to keep us busy for the weekend! Or, do we want to act the role of the child, and throw the work on bunk bed, and go do something more fun, like tow the boat to the lake and water ski, or jet over to the islands to chase some skirts (as if there are not plenty of bored and lonely gals in our own hometowns), do we want to say as a society, like the child says to homework, "This is tooooo HARD!" "This isn't going to do any good!!" "This is a waste of time, it won't help!"
"Why do I have to learn this crap, I'm not going to do this for a living, let somebody else learn it!"

The modern societies may try to dress up their love of neo-primitivism and anarcho deep green primitivism in intellectual and rhetorical arguments.

But the truth is, it is really the philosophy of the pouting child. "I CAN'T"!"

As as the old guys used to say, "Can't never did shiit."

Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom.

What I am asking is what are the knock-on consequences of tech?...

This is not a rhetorical trick....

Yes it is.  It is a question that you yourself cannot even begin to answer, and it alone makes a mockery of your use of Cerenkov's name.  And the implicit claim of "catastrophe" is trivially refuted because I can point to an existence proof to the contrary.

That existence proof is photosynthesis, a "technology" (in the same sense that evolution is "intelligent" as it generates options and selects the superior ones).  It's been around for the better part of a billion years now, and shows no signs of losing its usefulness.  Some of humanity's best courses of action involve optimizing our use of existing photosynthetic organisms and creating new ones.

Photosynthesis isn't the end.  We can already beat the 10% efficiency of algae with 27% efficient silicon PV cells, and if we can't use quantum dots to break the 50% barrier in PV maybe we can learn enough about the quantum behavior of chlorophyll to turn it into an electric converter instead of a chemical one.  The photonic energy conversion efficiency of human devices is already well above that of higher plants, will soon exceed that of single-celled plants, and may boost the planetary product of captured solar energy far beyond what Nature managed to do for herself.

One product of the last three centuries of unsustainable industrial revolution was a huge amount of an undepletable resource:  knowledge.  Knowledge cannot be used up, and its usefulness increases more rapidly than it accumulates.  On the one hand, we learn to capture more and more renewable energy (algae, PV, photochemistry); on the other hand, we learn to do more with the energy we have.  Eventually we'll reach another plateau like photosynthesis more or less topped out before, but it'll be at a substantially higher level and it'll all be ours.

I have to quote Roger here:

"If you fail to consider the world around you without considering technology, you are a fool."

Truer words were never written.

Of course the Earth is finite but the the moon still has time to orbit the Earth another 60,000,000,000 times. Fresh water has gone through billions of cycles in the lifetime of the world and will go through billions of more cycles. Some of that H2O will be split by photosynthesis to make sugar and free oxygen. Later respiration will
oxydize that sugar and recombined water will be released.
Rube Goldberg has been dead for many years and I missed meeting that very imaginitive man in person. Problems need solutions and solutions come from imagination and scientific analysis of those imaginings.