The Dragon's Tales taunts me
Jul. 16th, 2007 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
james_davis_nicollBy pointing out this justification for space colonization. I think I might call it the "boiling frog" argument.
I will admit that I've see this idea before (and used it myself) but I question the timescale the author uses, which seems to rely on this
For the last 100 years, global energy consumption has been growing three percent per year, which is a little more than twice as fast as population growth and about 0.7 percent slower than global GDP growth.
It was my impression that per capita energy use rates in developed nations isn't growing all that fast.
The author also overlooks the possiblity that even though being able to escape a rapidly heating planet -- and I mean the kind of heat that leaves a planet sterile, not just shifts climate zones towards the poles -- would be handy, we might fail to develop the ability to do it in the time frame specified. I guess that bit would be the Green Lantern model of space development: all you need is the will.
[added later]
There's also the possibility that while we might decide to move our more heat-productive activities off-planet, that might not include moving us. Earth is after all the easiest planet for us to live on.
I will admit that I've see this idea before (and used it myself) but I question the timescale the author uses, which seems to rely on this
For the last 100 years, global energy consumption has been growing three percent per year, which is a little more than twice as fast as population growth and about 0.7 percent slower than global GDP growth.
It was my impression that per capita energy use rates in developed nations isn't growing all that fast.
The author also overlooks the possiblity that even though being able to escape a rapidly heating planet -- and I mean the kind of heat that leaves a planet sterile, not just shifts climate zones towards the poles -- would be handy, we might fail to develop the ability to do it in the time frame specified. I guess that bit would be the Green Lantern model of space development: all you need is the will.
[added later]
There's also the possibility that while we might decide to move our more heat-productive activities off-planet, that might not include moving us. Earth is after all the easiest planet for us to live on.
