On Tue, Feb 08, 2011 at 04:09:05AM -0800, Srini RamaKrishnan wrote: > Yes, I think 3D printing and similar technologies [0] are tempting,
In principle this would scale to micro and eventually nanoscale. Right now it would mean lots of magic ink cartridges, and prices which make them effectively unobtainium (nevermind facilities and raw resources required to brew them). > but unless we answer the carbon footprint, hydrologic cycle, climate Carbon is mostly a fossil problem, so it would be adequately addressed by renewable, e.g. thin-film photovoltaics on plastic or sheet metal. With abundant energy water desalination and closed circuit water in production are feasible. Long-term you would directly capture CO2 from the atmosphere (or scrub flue gas, or use biomass as first-stage fixation) to produce fuel and synthetics, using PV as energy input. But it's pretty obvious we're going to burn every dead dino we can dig out, so all this is future fixing our toxic sludge they inherited. > change, food availability and population explosion questions (to list An interesting approach is direct farming of single-cell algae in photobioreactors (which can be also used for CO2 and nitrate/phosphate scrubbing) for animal and human food. If the going gets tough, soylent gets green ;) > the most obvious) conclusively we won't have the runway left to > execute on the post-industrial revolution phase. Ideally we would > discover on top of answers to the above questions a carbon-neutral raw > material that could be the input for 3D printing and would be easily For large scale structures silicates are way underutilized. Either as ceramics, geopolymer or polyconcrete. Of course no fossil fuel for firing, which can be a problem. > mined / grown / gathered in situ. Unfortunately the odds are about the There's some potential for perennials like Miscanthus for carbon capture (as biochar) as well as providing cellulose for chemical feedstock. Same applies for single-cell algae, assuming large scale culture and energy-efficient harvesting can be made to work. > same for discovering aliens [1] [2] [3] [4]. > > Human history is full of lost civilizations, in the global age we are > all a single civilization - why shouldn't we be the next in line to be > affected by environmental factors a la Indus valley or the Maya. Yeah, I'm also onboard of Diamond's Collapse. Particularly systemic failure of complex systems through concerted propagation of individual failures is pretty scary, and arguably already observable in places. > I'll end this post with this set of photos: > http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2011/02/07/captured-the-ruins-of-detroit/2672/#more-2672 > > Cheeni > > [0] Nanotechnology is more hopeful to me frankly though we are farther > off than 3D printing to executing on it - anything can happen in 50 > years. > [1] Not pure hyperbole, arsenic based life forms: > http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/astrobiology_toxic_chemical.html It's supposed to be a facultative arsenate utilizer, and the paper is under serious fire, and is likely to be retracted. > [2] Seven billion of us soon, nine billion in 2045. Let’s hope that I don't see how we're supposed to go to nine gigamonkeys without some serious crop failure and starvation along the way. > Malthus was right about our ingenuity. > http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/seven-billion/kunzig-text/1 The problem is that ingenuity is typically directed towards better killing thy neighbor, once the food fight gets serious enough. > [3] Water from Alaska for the middle east: > http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/08/the-race-to-buy-up-the-world-s-water.html > {The oil tankers turning into water tankers is surprising but we don't > even blink at the thought of bottled water which has been commonplace > for decades now} > [4] Food production must be increased 70 percent to provide for the > extra 2.4 billion people expected to come aboard planet Earth by 2050. > http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/news/chiefeditor/2009/10/food-for-nine-billion-people.html Yeah, I wonder why water and food doesn't come up as limits to growth more often. A blind spot the size of Texas. > [4] -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org";>leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
