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536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

sciencemag.org

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Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#121

Post by Nasrudith »

newsbinator wrote: post #118
pogimabus wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Becoming multiplanetary IS handling it, just not in a necessarily "ideal" way. The problem is that we don't want to have the reset button hit and have every human in existence set back to the stone age technologically; having multiple self sustaining human societies on multiple planets mitigates that risk in a major way since the likelihood of a disaster being so large that it resets technology on both/all planets is…

I suppose a pandemic would still do it though, assuming sustained travel between habitats. We're gonna want a multi-week airlock to be allowed into the Moon & Mars habitats.

Latency provides a natural level of quarantine as well even if the volume is high enough for a sustained stream. Although there are plenty of messy details involved in sufficiency.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#122

Post by kmonsen »

pogimabus wrote: post #111
ativzzz wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me this is the main reason that going multiplanetary or space habitat based is basically the only way to escape this inevitable doom I disagree with this. Leaving the Earth doesn't remove random acts of doom from happening, and in fact, they are more lethal in unfamiliar and hostile environments. If we do not figure out how to handle such black swan events on our home planet, we have no chance of handling them i…

Becoming multiplanetary IS handling it, just not in a necessarily "ideal" way. The problem is that we don't want to have the reset button hit and have every human in existence set back to the stone age technologically; having multiple self sustaining human societies on multiple planets mitigates that risk in a major way since the likelihood of a disaster being so large that it resets technology on both/all planets is…

The problem is that it is at least 10x easier to fix Earth than to terraform Mars, and all the problems we have on Earth are going to be there as well.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#123

Post by afterburner »

> Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says.

I dunno, sounds like 541 was the worst year to be alive. That year also had a second volcano eruption according to the article.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#124

Post by aksss »

yummypaint wrote: post #88
lgl wrote: post #62

The 2010 eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull [0] was a small sample of the perturbations that a volcanic event can have on day to day lives. And it was a relatively small eruption. Anything much larger than that will most likely have devastating effects on modern society on pretty much all levels and it's not really a matter of "if" but "when". Besides eruptions, many other scarier events can cause huge shifts on…

It's also a good reason to leave fossil fuels in the ground and not just extract them as quickly as possible wherever we find them. It seems conceivable that we could eventually find ourselves thermodynamically unable to recover after a catastrophy like a big solar flare. Unfortunately there is no way for anyone to make money by being responsible in this way. We are effectively draining our planetary rainy day fund a…

> There's no way for anyone to make money by being responsible

Not just that, but there's no way to sustain the level of human development (and population) we currently have without continuing to feed the energy beast. Our daily burn rate on oil/gas/coal is so profoundly high, and growing, that a) nothing can fill the gap; and b) it can't be shut down without condemning further development (esp. in Africa, India and China). Two disconnected factoids to illustrate the level of dependency and consumption we have today: without ammonia synthesis from fossil fuel, worldwide organic fertilizer stock could sustain only about 4bln people - globally; China in-serviced more cement (which requires fossil fuels) in like five years than the US did in the last 100 years.

To reduce carbon output, you need to switch coal use to natural gas where possible. That's the best near term solution right now - isolate coal and oil consumption to the industries that really need them - e.g. transportation, manufacturing - and work on alternative sources of electric generation, i.e. hydro where available, nuclear where not, unless some miracle net-positive and reliable electric generation method becomes available in the meantime.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#125

Post by afterburner »

MannishMan wrote: post #73

I know this is pedantic, but based on the order of events in the article wouldn’t 543 be the worst year to be alive? By then you would have experienced the cumulative horror of starving and freezing through two volcanic events and watching a third to half of your friends and family die of plague. 536 would have a been frightening and confusing as the volcanic fog began to roll in, but you couldn’t know the terror of…

Plague and second volcano hitting in 541 is also a good candidate.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#127

Post by godzillabrennus »

aksss wrote: post #124
yummypaint wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also a good reason to leave fossil fuels in the ground and not just extract them as quickly as possible wherever we find them. It seems conceivable that we could eventually find ourselves thermodynamically unable to recover after a catastrophy like a big solar flare. Unfortunately there is no way for anyone to make money by being responsible in this way. We are effectively draining our planetary rainy day fund a…

> There's no way for anyone to make money by being responsible Not just that, but there's no way to sustain the level of human development (and population) we currently have without continuing to feed the energy beast. Our daily burn rate on oil/gas/coal is so profoundly high, and growing, that a) nothing can fill the gap; and b) it can't be shut down without condemning further development (esp. in Africa, India and…

We can use nuclear ️ to lower carbon emissions.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#128

Post by kortilla »

aksss wrote: post #124
yummypaint wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also a good reason to leave fossil fuels in the ground and not just extract them as quickly as possible wherever we find them. It seems conceivable that we could eventually find ourselves thermodynamically unable to recover after a catastrophy like a big solar flare. Unfortunately there is no way for anyone to make money by being responsible in this way. We are effectively draining our planetary rainy day fund a…

> There's no way for anyone to make money by being responsible Not just that, but there's no way to sustain the level of human development (and population) we currently have without continuing to feed the energy beast. Our daily burn rate on oil/gas/coal is so profoundly high, and growing, that a) nothing can fill the gap; and b) it can't be shut down without condemning further development (esp. in Africa, India and…

Or, you know, just use nuclear.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#129

Post by baby »

kmonsen wrote: post #122
pogimabus wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Becoming multiplanetary IS handling it, just not in a necessarily "ideal" way. The problem is that we don't want to have the reset button hit and have every human in existence set back to the stone age technologically; having multiple self sustaining human societies on multiple planets mitigates that risk in a major way since the likelihood of a disaster being so large that it resets technology on both/all planets is…

The problem is that it is at least 10x easier to fix Earth than to terraform Mars, and all the problems we have on Earth are going to be there as well.

Resilience is not about fixing something. Otherwise we wouldn’t have created the internet.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#130

Post by Symmetry »

pogimabus wrote: post #111
ativzzz wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me this is the main reason that going multiplanetary or space habitat based is basically the only way to escape this inevitable doom I disagree with this. Leaving the Earth doesn't remove random acts of doom from happening, and in fact, they are more lethal in unfamiliar and hostile environments. If we do not figure out how to handle such black swan events on our home planet, we have no chance of handling them i…

Becoming multiplanetary IS handling it, just not in a necessarily "ideal" way. The problem is that we don't want to have the reset button hit and have every human in existence set back to the stone age technologically; having multiple self sustaining human societies on multiple planets mitigates that risk in a major way since the likelihood of a disaster being so large that it resets technology on both/all planets is…

There aren't many catastrophes that would totally wipe out Earth but still leave offworld colonies intact. Even after a supervolcanic eruption or plague or nuclear war there'll probably still be more living humans on Earth than on Mars. And supernovas and rogue AIs can wipe out both. I like the idea of settling space because I think human lives, if they're pleasant, are intrinsically valuable and I'd like there to be a trillion people in the solar system eventually. But in terms of of overcoming catastrophies you're better of donating to groups like Allfed or AI safety or arms control groups.
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