I recently saw some infographs and articles online talking about how we will run out of the resources necessary to power our machines and electronics in just over 50 years.
Is this true, or is it junk science? Am I going to have to tell my grandchildren about all the wonders of science they will never behold as we sit by the fire we made by rubbing sticks together?
What resources are they referring to? As far as I know, the biggest resource issues that face modern humanity are climate change, access to fresh water, energy production, and precious metals. All of them have at least somewhat feasible technological or infrastructural solutions. How the future will pan out will be heavily decided on how we act over the next few decades.
Basically yes, all of that.
Yes user, soon we will run out of sun.
The only actual limitation we have is budget, and radiation exposure.
Junk "science"
It is a political solution disguised as science.
First of all, if you truly believe this, it would be grossly irresponsible for you to have children or grandchildren.
>muh conspiraty
>club of rome club of jews
If peak oil happens before we find a viable alternative, we can kiss most of our more unecessary and energy-intensive technologies goodbye. Any energy we still produce would become extremely strategically important and would most likely be appropriated by the governments. That is, of course, uness the de-industrialization process causes a collapse of modern civilizations similar to the collapse of the WRE
>should have majored in geology or metallurgy
1. Climate Change:
Out of everything I mentioned, this is the one that concerns me the most. If the Arctic gets too warm it may trigger a methane feedback mechanism that will make the planet significantly warmer for the geologically foreseeable future. This will put incredible strain on ecosystems. Most plausible solution is carbon sequestration but this will likely require a huge excess in energy.
2. Access to fresh water:
For the most part this is a byproduct of climate change since areas that have been historically heavily populated may face widespread desertification. Most plausible solution is an improvement in desalination technology, but this also will probably be very energy intensive.
3. Energy Production
At current rates of industrial development, humans will probably use three times as much electricity globally as they did in 2010. The solutions I proposed for the other issues will also require an abundant amount of energy. My ideal situation is that we master fusion reactions for energy since a deuterium process would give us virtually limitless power from ocean water. However, this is very technically challenging and people have been trying to get fusion to work for a good 60 years. There are some indications that we are close to achieving it but, even so, implementation on a global scale may be very difficult. In the meantime our best bet is probably vast proliferation of PV solar tech, integrated into countless surfaces and infrastructure. Hydro, biofuels, and wind will probably serve secondary roles but I doubt will be suitable to fulfill the demand.
4. Precious metals.
There's a couple of points I'd like to make on this one. It is important to note that metals aren't some sort of consumable resource that disappears after it is incorporated into some sort of product. Civilization won't collapse just because there is a scarcity of new metal and there is no guarantee that we actually will run out of new deposit discoveries. Even if we did, it would behoove us to get much better at reprocessing metals from old products into new ones (which many major companies have been doing for years). And even if that were to run into scarcity with those factors considered, it would then behoove us to develop the necessary infrastructure for asteroid mining. Virtually all the precious metals in the Earth's crust were deposited there by meteor impacts in the first place since most of the heavier elements sunk to the planet's core sometime after its accretion. Being able to exploit the source of these materials would mean virtually limitless quantities of metals for use in our technology, it's just a matter of making the space-to-Earth transport a profitable endeavor. Any high degree of scarcity, in economics terms, would force us to develop that infrastructure. As with the other problems, the heavier we invest in long-term solutions, the better off we shall be in the future.
What are the metals we can't live without? Not familiar with precious metals at all desu
I should have made the point that there's more metals that are still pretty vital to the functioning of modern tech that don't fit into the category of precious metals. I just mis-typed there. Everything from gold to iridium to neodymium have applications in modern machines. It depends on the demands of the system, but a significant portion of them are used in some way.
From wikipedia:
"A precious metal is a rare, naturally occurring metallic chemical element of high economic value. Chemically, the precious metals tend to be less reactive than most elements (see noble metal). They are usually ductile and have a high lustre. Historically, precious metals were important as currency but are now regarded mainly as investment and industrial commodities. Gold, silver, platinum, and palladium each have an ISO 4217 currency code.
The best known precious metals are the coinage metals, gold and silver. Although both have industrial uses, they are better known for their uses in art, jewellery, fine jewellery and coinage. Other precious metals include the platinum group metals: ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum, of which platinum is the most widely traded.[1] The demand for precious metals is driven not only by their practical use but also by their role as investments and a store of value. Historically, precious metals have commanded much higher prices than common industrial metals."
Adapt or die
Peak conventional has already happened in 2012. Sure tar goo will help ease the downslope as will natural gas. Probably will be more dams and nuke plants built. Overall by the end of this century there will either be as many or more people living in absolute poverty, filth and misery or a lot less people living under a totalitarian world police state controlling all energy possibly through some draconian carbon rationing program. These would be best case scenarios though, in all likelihood there will be much war, pestilence and disease on top of energy depletion and the new dark ages as religion and occult control of it is already on the rise again. The enlightenment was so long ago...
Asteroid mining starting to look like a real good idea now assholes?
It is important to remember that it's impossible to do anything about climate change because regulation never works for anything.
Tell that to the ozone layer
Literally what? Do you know how much planet we have left? We aren't going to run out of anything, aside probably fossil fuels.
asteroids are tiny flying pieces of sand compared to our planet
it's not going to save us faggot
Singular asteroids have enough rare metals to sustain our current demand for thousands of years. Check yo' math, mayn.
We have used less metals in human history than a 5km asteroid contains
>revisions backdated
Yeah, backdating is required for Hubert linearization analysis, but it provides a misleading picture of discoveries.
Then how is the earth possibly running out?
Most of the precious metals were too heavy and sunk into the Earth's core billions of years ago. It's rare that these resources stayed on the surface. The asteroids are pure and can be extracted.
>YEAH, NO EDUCATED PEOPLE SHOULD REPRODUCE, ONLY THOSE FROM THE STARVING, ILLITERATE MASSES OF AFRICA SHOULD REPRODUCE
Nigga, how dumb are you, seriously? Literally the BEST thing you can do for the future, is reproduce, and mold a responsible human being. Africa is projected to have over 3 billion people by 2050, with very few of them literate, and educated. We're going to be overwhelmed by the third world very soon.
We are never going to forget technology and modern science.
Books about those topics are everywhere on the planet, from Tasmania to remote pacific islands.
You can't lose them all.
>Innaspace
>Innaground
Which solution to element shortage is more utopical Veeky Forums?
Probably.
Its not that minerals will "run out", is more like, as minerals become harder to mine and more scarce prices would rise and 1ºst world systems will struggle to keep supply until they break.
Then expect something like battlefield 2142, except sooner and without an ice age.
It's junk.
Availability of materials (e.g. rare earth elements) is mostly an issue of how much we're willing to pay, both in monetary and environmental costs.
Rare earth elements aren't actually "rare" per se, they just aren't clustered into concentrated deposits. Most of the production is an offshoot of mining something else. If you dig a big enough hole, you'll get rare earth elements in addition to whatever else you might be looking for.
In the worst case, we'll just end up "mining" landfills.
There's enough uranium in the oceans to power the world economy for millenia. It's also enough energy to keep recycling materials. Currently it's cheaper to mine uranium but we'll get there eventually.
The only problem is that they are far too much human beings on this planet.
(((Scientists))) and progressists will tell you it's not true, that we should just change our consumption way of life. Do not misunderstand, of course we MUST change of life, based of consumption, more and more consumption, but do not be foolish. Even if all American and European people live a very frugal life, do you think Chinese, Africans, Indians will do the same ?
Of course not, they will pollute, pollute, pollute.
Fuck Churchill. Because of him India is no more a british colony and Bongs could not apply eugenics policy, and fuck Roosevelt for bombing japs who understood "the yellow threat". And fuck the ONU for bringing medecine all around the world.
If we make fusion sustainable, energy will not be a problem (and will also solve carbon emissions since we have less dependence on fossil fuels).
^(THIS SHOULD BE OUR MAIN CONCERN RIGHT NOW BTW)^
Afterwards, it would be logical to build a base on the moon to mine materials that are becoming harder to find on earth. Asteroid mining is cool and all, but building something close to home is a much easier prospect. Much less travel time and relative ease of operation. Also: Helium 3. This isn't to say that asteroid mining shouldn't happen, since an asteroid of a few km will have more materials that we can dream of, but building machines to go there, successfully mine it, and then come back is a long and expensive trip.
Maybe a stretch, but if fusion has enough energy I assume it would be able to power more water distillation plants. Water takes shitloads of energy to purify in distillation, but if fusion has as much energy as it should if done in a sustainable fashion, we should have more than enough for this.
All of my bets are on fusion. We really, really need it to work.
Asteroid and lunar mining sounds fantastic and all, but how exactly will they get that massive amount of heavy materials from space to earth in a cost effective manner?
This is what has always made me skeptical of asteroid or lunar mining.
>inb4 space elevator
it's infeasible to make a structure of that size and weight that can transport materials down to earth and withstand the potential hazards of being that large (including wind, debris, etc)
Basically we have a time limit to achieve maximum bodily efficiency and/or the.construction of enzymes to safely digent uranium for our consumption.
To be frank, I don't think we can rule out globalthermonuclear wat before we even get close to running out or resources
No.
There's plenty of "precious" resources in space and on asteroids. If there isn't, we'll invent renewable alternatives. There are renewable biofuels and electric cars potentially powered by renewables right now - they're just not economical because gas is so damn cheap.
I suspect basic income, VR, and automation will cut back the more wasteful consumption patterns.
We have plenty to get by for a pretty good while. Issue is we're at like 5x the population amount sustainable. Normally with deer populations hunters would solve that issue or nature will get real metal real fast. We've managed to stave that off so far.
Someone answer this
How the fuck do we transport all the materials from captured asteroid back to earth?
With rockets duh
m8...
No. We will just find different materials that do the same thing made from more common elements. Take for instance neodymium magnets. Neodymium magnets were invented because of a shortage of samarium for samarium magnets.
In addition, as supplies run down it will become economically viable to extract these elements from less pure ores
You can just shoot cargo mined from the asteroid out at a precise enough trajectory towards the Earth that it will be caught in Earth's gravity well long enough for short range craft to stabilise the cargo and package it for atmospheric entry.
Extremely layman explanation, doing shit like this industrially would become extremely complicated especially for the first time.
meme drive
In (somewhat) more seriousness we've landed on asteroids and we are getting prett good at landing on earth now
Is that anything like a hype thruster?
That has nothing to do with taking 800 tons of Iron, nickel, gold, or any other material from a space based "warehouse" down to earth without it costing 10 billion dollars. It needs to be profitable, efficient, and with few mistakes otherwise your thousands of tons of material in space will stay in space
Doesn't have even close to the level of thrust needed. Fuck off.
>Doesn't have even close to the level of thrust needed.
>Implying it won't be improved
kill yourself
Maybe the spiral power is the solution to all our problems?
madoka was such a shit show holy shit
>Madoka
Wrong. That's from Gurren lagan iirc
I don't want to sound Edgy, but there are many humans living in this world. we need to fucking nuke Africa, and the overpopulated asiatic shitholes. Europe, America and Oceania are doing fine though, but this could change since thirld world inmigration is skyrocketing.
there is nothing edgy about facts, the same liberals who love their nigger pets, will be the ones nuking them with tears in their eyes, or they will be butchered themselves by them, if shit continues like it is now
>nuke them
A more effective tactic would be to create a virus and release in in a manner that it kills off tons of them. Have the vaccine ready when it hits your country.
I've heard the prospects of CAS-9 may be able to engineer viruses to target specific races of people due to innate differences in genetics, albeit far down the road from the current state of it, but if/when we reach that point, I think africa, India, and the middle east are good candidates for depopulation. They're among the most useless groups on earth.
It's not really edgy to state the way things are. It's painfully obvious this world is too full of people. A war can cost billions and destroy more than it needs to, so the second best option is a race-based disease if possible.