space habitats Forum: Spacesettlers
Thread: space habitats
--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, Joe Strout wrote:
>
> On 6/13/13 10:27 AM, brooksn wrote:
>
> > > http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/aqtrends.html#comparison
> >
> > This only the US levels for 6 air pollutants. As the graph shows CO2 is
> > still increasing from the US. And the graph doesn't show non air
> > pollution from US sources. As well the rest of the developing world is
> > well, developing, so their output of pollution is on the rise.
>
> All true. Yet it's been a long time since London smog was so thick you
> could almost cut it with a knife, or since any busy road in the U.S. had
> a more or less constant cloud of blue smoke hovering over it.
>
> It seems to me that early industrialization caused the worst pollution,
> and in developed nations, it's been getting steadily better since then.
> On a global scale, the big problem is the developing nations, which
> (quite naturally) want to industrialize just as we have; the sheer size
> of those populations makes their pollution a global issue. However, I
> don't think they're as dirty as we were at the start of the Industrial
> Revolution, because they have newer, cleaner technologies available to
> them then we had back then.
>
> Of course I still don't want to chew the air in Beijing if I can help it.
> > > http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/Gasoline_Inflation.asp
> > >
> > > Of course I do believe oil is getting harder (and more expensive) to
> > > obtain, but demand for gas is also starting to slip as cars become more
> > > efficient, and face competition from electric vehicles. So both supply
> > > and demand are going down. How exactly the balance of those will tip is
> > > hard to predict.
> >
> > Well with the Chinese and Indian middle class buying cars and supply
> > pretty much stagnant it isn't hard to see that near record prices from
> > the graph above are eventually heading up.
>
> Probably. But maybe not -- electric cars are on the early part of a
> very rapid growth curve
> (http://www.forbes.com/sites/pikeresearch/2013/02/06/dying-ev-industry-set-for-growth/).
> Rising gas prices will naturally feed demand for EVs, and it doesn't
> seem to me that we've really hit the economies of scale that will be
> possible when EVs really catch on. So I expect EVs to get a lot better
> and cheaper in the next decade or two, which will apply downward
> pressure to gas prices. The net effect is complex.
Rapid growth from low numbers is easy, 17k to 54k year to year, but there was 1.2 million cars sold each year so even though it tripled in the US we far from there and the developing world is currently on an upswing in car purchasing and the vast majority are gas guzzlers. I'm the sure we'll move to more efficiency with cheaper EV and more expensive gas but we are still adding more and more to the air that we will not be able to sustain.
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_world_food_price_crisis
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%9311_global_food_crisis
> > Here's two food price crisis in the past few years leading to political
> > instability.
>
> Fair enough; prices certainly did spike a couple of times. But how bad
> was it? Did anyone here notice it at the grocery store? (I didn't.)
Most of your income doesn't go to food prices, and the money that does go to food prices includes a huge chunk of the 'processing' not the raw Ag price. In the third world a huge percent of the poors income goes to food and a bigger chunk of the food price is the raw food not the processing. Hence the riots and food crisis due to price increases over the past two years. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/poverty/news/2008/05/01/4444/food-price-crisis-101/
> As it happens, IEEE Spectrum this month included a special section
> called "The Age of Plenty" that dives more deeply into these issues.
> The articles appear to be available online:
>
> http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/the-age-of-plenty
>
> It's great reading, and I highly recommend it. The take-home messages I
> got out of it were (1) there's plenty of food; (2) there will continue
> to be plenty of food, assuming we continue to invest in agricultural
> research; and (3) the Big Ag companies (a handful of companies that
> control a disturbingly large portion of the food supply) are a bit
> worrisome.
>
> Of course it will help if we can get people to stop fighting GMOs. I
> can't believe that golden rice hasn't been widely adopted by now!
The innovations mentioned are going to be necessary to try and keep the food supply up but unstable climate, higher populations, high energy prices, and changing diets are going to continue to strain the system.
> > Mining is a carbon intensive process, mining creates lots of heavy
> > metals pollution (tailings).
>
> Often true.
>
> > Productivity is mostly to remove expensive
> > humans not to reduce pollution or CO2 emmissions.
>
> Probably also often (but not always) true. There certainly is a need
> for government regulation here to encourage companies to do the right
> thing when it comes to such externalities.
Totally agree we need a continuously increasing price on carbon/pollution, with a decreasing tax on labor and capital.
> > > True. But neither does inventing or exaggerating problems.
> >
> > I'll go where the facts take me.
>
> Me too. Yay facts!
Amen. :)
> > Reducing the population can be done pretty easily, it's shrinking in
> > many first world nations right now. Education (in particular girls),
> > access to birth control, gender inequality, etc. have been shown to
> > reduce birth rates and don't involve force.
>
> Right, and an excellent point too (assuming you meant to write "gender
> equality" above). I doubt it would ever dwindle to the point where most
> of the Earth is a nature preserve, though, without some outside
> incentive. (This doesn't have to imply use of force -- it could be
> economic incentives, such as a government or NPO simply buying up land
> at prices the owners are willing to accept.)
>
> Best,
> - Joe
I agree, hopefully we can all get on the same page before we really screw things up.
Brooks