The population may be at unsustainably high levels for the long term, but the pace of technological change is escalating so quickly I'm amazed anyone can take an attitude towards the future other than alert interest.
Say it maxes out at 15 Billion - there's a plethora of ways to feed and house those people without paving over the rest of the biosphere, killing the large mammals, burning the remaining fossil fuels and using the rest of the topsoil. Will people muster the will not to? People are fairly bad at responding to long distant threats (like the potential for over-warming from CO2 emissions predicted in the 70s). But they are really remarkable at responding to in their face threats, like the super storms, droughts, melting ice caps, and so on that we have today. So I'm not going to expect disaster or eutopia. I thought we'd be on the Moon in 2012 or else destroyed by nuclear war. Expectations tells more about the thinker than anything else. If you do like predicting the future, I'd recommend Nate Silver's recent book, very enjoyable broad look at various fields of prediction with a fairly balanced assessment of what works and what hasn't, and why. --Chris Thanks, --Chris [email protected] +1-301-270-6524 On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 1:42 PM, Joe <[email protected]> wrote: > RAF, Edgar, > > I withhold my "Gosh-Oh!" until doomsday actually comes. > > But it may be forthcoming. We'll all three be the first and last to know. > > --Joe > > > R A Fonda <rafonda@...> wrote: > > > > On 11/29/2012 4:08 PM, Edgar Owen wrote: > > > Nice poem and certainly to the point! > > > > gassho > > > > ------------------------------------ > > Current Book Discussion: any Zen book that you recently have read or are > reading! Talk about it today!Yahoo! Groups Links > > > >
