How long can humans survive?

[rangerrebew]

How long can humans survive?
This time of plenty won't last for ever
BY Tom Chivers
. Farming depends on the 'whale fall' Credit: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg/Getty
Tom Chivers
 
January 17, 2022
 

In the deep ocean, occasionally, a whale carcass falls to the bottom of the sea. Most of the time, in the state of nature, creatures have just about enough to survive. But the first creatures to find the whale have more food than they could ever eat. These scavengers live lives of extraordinary plenty — some of the smaller, faster-breeding species might do so for several generations. There is enough to go around a thousand times over. For a while.

And then the whale is gone, and the creatures go back to their lives of crushing pressure, constant darkness, and an eternal knife-edge struggle for survival. As Thomas Malthus had it in his bleak vision: organisms, which increase exponentially in number, will rapidly outgrow their resources, which can only grow arithmetically. So of course, the excess population which has grown up on this brief glut must die off

We are currently living in a time of whalefall, suggests the scientist Vaclav Smil in his new book, How the World Really Works. He doesn’t use the word, of course: credit for the macabre whale metaphor must go to Scott Alexander. But modern humans are animals, products of evolution like any other, and yet we noticeably do not spend every minute of every day struggling to get the material required to survive. Instead, we build cathedrals and watch football, we make art, we waste time on Twitter. And that is because we live on the gigantic, blessed whale carcass that is our fossil fuel inheritance.

https://unherd.com/2022/01/how-long-can-humans-survive/

[Kamaji]

Not sure I buy all of the article's premises.

[corbe]

Toad the wet Sprocket - All right


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzDUB1mRpSo#

[Absalom]

The earliest primate linked to Man existed some 6,000,000 years past;
while having to co-exist w/the Forces of Nature to survive.
His survivorability demonstrates that he had what it takes.
We will survive, when and if, we are able to conquer (not co-exist with)
the forces aggressively seeking the destruction of our Civilization.
A forceful beginning would be to punish w/finality(death) such forces;
to set an example and send a message while simultaneously ridding
ourselves of the sanctimonious horse manure we embrace.

[Cyber Liberty]

I expect humanity will last until the next Extinction Level Event.  That doesn't stop it from sucking a whole lot until then.

[Kamaji]

I expect humanity will last until the next Extinction Level Event.  That doesn't stop it from sucking a whole lot until then.

when's that supposed to take place?  Can we hurry it up?

[Fishrrman]

Cyber predicts:
"I expect humanity will last until the next Extinction Level Event."

We haven't yet reached the "summit" in Malthus' cycle.

The mass of humanity cannot continue to grow forever. Nothing in physical existence will.

There are limits to everything.
Including us.

[GtHawk]

I believe Zager and Evans already answered that question.

[corbe]

   While searching for Rush ~2112 I stumbled upon this which I thought appropriate..

Rush - Twilight Zone - [HD Remastered]


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI0tOQmKx7w

[roamer_1]

The premise is largely incorrect - Prior to petroleum, and when coal was largely limited to powering trains across this vast land, MOST folks lived pretty well in rural America. It ain't hard to grow enough food to feed yourself, providing to control enough land to do it. Shoot, most 1/2 acre yards are capable of growing enough food to feed a family of four or six (not fully counting meat)... Add twenty acres, a beef cow and a milk cow, and it can dang near be a luxury.


The problem lies in the bare fact that most folks, most farmers included, no longer possess the knowledge necessary to do that without petroleum products... and without electricity. That technology, to live otherwise, has almost been lost.

[Absalom]

The premise is largely incorrect - Prior to petroleum, and when coal was largely limited to powering trains across this vast land, MOST folks lived pretty well in rural America. It ain't hard to grow enough food to feed yourself, providing to control enough land to do it. Shoot, most 1/2 acre yards are capable of growing enough food to feed a family of four or six (not fully counting meat). Add twenty acres, a beef cow and a milk cow, and it can dang near be a luxury.
The problem lies in the bare fact that most folks, most farmers included, no longer possess the knowledge necessary to do that without petroleum products... and without electricity. That technology, to live otherwise, has almost been lost.
------------------------------
Roamer, accurate and intuitive as usual; a larger point I continuously assert (using different words).
Our site windbags claim relentlessly that: "We are the Greatest" a claim owned by the Clowns of Hollywood.
In plain English, we see as far as we do only because we are able to perch on the broad shoulders of the
Ancients proceeding us who created the ideas & wisdom permitting Mankind to survive and thrive.
   

[roamer_1]

Roamer, accurate and intuitive as usual; a larger point I continuously assert (using different words).
Our site windbags claim relentlessly that: "We are the Greatest" a claim owned by the Clowns of Hollywood.
In plain English, we see as far as we do only because we are able to perch on the broad shoulders of the
Ancients proceeding us who created the ideas & wisdom permitting Mankind to survive and thrive.
 

Quite true, @Absalom

I too am rather unimpressed with the hubris of modernity. 

[Free Vulcan]

We will survive till our technology is developed far enough to turn around and completely bite us on the a**, if the globalist engineered economic 'reset' doesn't do us in first.

[Kamaji]

We will survive till our technology is developed far enough to turn around and completely bite us on the a**, if the globalist engineered economic 'reset' doesn't do us in first.

We're just about at that point - genetic engineering - CRISPR and a few more "innovative" engineers in China or NK will, sooner or later, engineer an actual deadly pandemic.

[Absalom]

Quite true, @Absalom
I too am rather unimpressed with the hubris of modernity. 

-----------------------
Roamer,
On the mark, per usual; as hubris defines so many of our self-labeled leaders.
Contrast this conceit w/the attitude & behavior of the Wise of the past, anchored by humility.
So who sang the praises of these Wise down thru history? Themselves??? Emphatically not!!!
It was the Peers of Plato in the Greek Assembly, of Cicero in the Roman Senate, of the Scholastics,
among them Aquinas, Ockham, Duns Scotus, of the English Whigs among them of Hume, Hobbes,
Locke ............and so on.
Stay tuned, as our Assholery howls ever louder, WE ARE THE GREATEST!!! Why of course.
 




 

[dfwgator]

Ask Keith Richards.

[berdie]

Ask Keith Richards.

  :rolling:Amen, brother...amen.