Are we screwing ourselves over?

[Canadian*Sniper]

No we won't, all of our resources actually come from the sun. ALL of them.

If oil came from dinosaurs or plankton, those were dependent on the sun for energy like all plants and everything that eats plants in the food cycle.

So ... we just need to do a better job of using them. Solar power is NOT the only sun derived energy source, wind and weather cycles are a result of the sun as well. At least, that's what I understand.

Btw ... we suck at using solar power. From what I've read, we can't even harness even a decent fraction of the energy that actually gets to solar panels, it's like 0.001% or something.

We humans are doing a number of things to mess up our future on earth.
1) War
2) Pollution
3) Population

We're still waging war against an enemy which can only end up with a future super power. I blame it on humans, not weapons. We crave power.

We have a recycle program in most countries but not very many people listen to it. Our O zone is depleting and sooner or later we'll have to keep away from the sun.

Medical Science has increased to such an extent that it's no longer survival of the fittest. You just take a pill and you won't die. Instead live another 20 years. What happens with an oversized population? more cars and more pollution.

Discuss. I'm only ranting.

[tical]

The Mayan Calendar ends on December 21st, 2012 A.D so I'm assuming it's the end of the world.
or
the return/or coming of the messiah?

[Baker]

We humans are doing a number of things to mess up our future on earth.
1) War
2) Pollution
3) Population

1. There is less war than ever before in the existence of mankind.

2. Hmmm. Not sure. We are for sure altering the environment. Maybe this is a challenge all intelligent life must tackle and defeat. It's also a "hidden cost" in economics courses.

3. This is going to strike some people as odd, but I think there need to be MORE humans. The more humans, the more technology due to more manpower and brains and research and then we can finally get off this rock.

We're still waging war against an enemy which can only end up with a future super power.

No, the lesson is that there is "no us" or "no them". There should only be "we." China is still in a rather infantile stage of social progression (I'm not talking economic progression -- I'm saying they are even more ignorant of the rest of the world than Americans are knocked as being) because they have been held back for so long.

The internet will change all that, and truth be told, in order for them to have influence in the rest of the world (aka be a true superpower), they are going to have to learn English.

English is the default international language and people in the Middle East, Africa, North America, South America, Europe, etc. simply are not going to learn Chinese en mass. It's too wacky of a language and there are actually 2 ways to speak it --- Mandarin and Cantonese --- in China itself.

Once the learn English they will be reading all the stuff their "censors" deny them from knowing. You cannot control information and expand too. This will happen and then things will become different.

Just look at Europe. There are barely separate countries over there. 150 years ago France and Germany and all those countries started a war with each other every other week, it seemed.

Medical Science has increased to such an extent that it's no longer survival of the fittest. You just take a pill and you won't die. Instead live another 20 years. What happens with an oversized population? more cars and more pollution.

This is just a phase. It'll get fixed. When there were first cars, they didn't have seatbelts and, I guess, the hood of a car could cut your head off in an accident (we have "crumpling" hoods now, the glass would cut you to shreads in an accident, the headlights blinded other cars ... enter Ralph Nader and the book "Unsafe at Any Speed" and it changed everything over time.

When there was first the internet, flame wars were everywhere. People were not used to civilized debate and everything was name calling.

This will somehow get tackled. Maybe they will event a pill that takes care of it, who knows. I don't know what the solution is, but I bet hordes of researchers and sociologists are working on it. That's just my theory.

[Canadian*Sniper]

I can see China replacing America in being the world superpower in a few years

[Baker]

I can see China replacing America in being the world superpower in a few years

Let's say you are right.

Has China become more or less like us in the last 20 years? (Where us = Western civilization)

At the end of that path, they are like us. Maybe an economic rivalry, but not in any other ways.

This lunatic ran China up until 1976:



And even in the late 1980's, they were barely industrialized in the Western sense.

They re-acquired Hong Kong in 1997 (right?) and that has been a learning experience for them.

To have a lot of worldwide influence (aka superpower), other countries have to desire to cooperate with you. And as they learn more about the rest of the world and respond to political pressure, they become more like the rest of the civilized world.

Why fear the growth of a country that ultimately ends up being like everyone else?

[Canadian*Sniper]

Economics is power

[Baker]

Economics is power

Money is mostly make-believe. Let's say every country in the world goes into debt by the same amount per person, who owes who what?

If 2 men are stuck on an island, each with $100,000. One man builds the other man a house for $100,000 and the other man builds 3 cars for $100,000.

As they sell each other what they made -- for comedic effect -- a walrus comes up and eats all the money. The money is gone.

What just happened? Two men made a house and 3 cars and some pieces of paper made them do it ( ), heh.

Yeah right , how can pieces of paper make you do anything?

[Canadian*Sniper]

lol get some sleep Baker

[Deckard_B26354]

Haven't we all learned something from Quake 1??? A BADASS saviour will redeem us!

[Monster]

We aren't being very smart at all. Soon the resources will be used up, no matter what. The decline of Earth is inevitable.

[QuadRaptor]

"all of our resources actually come from the sun. ALL of them"

A lot of our resources come from former stars, actually!

We have evidence that all of the elements past Iron on the periodic table had to have been made in supernovae, and then we get those elements because our sun gathered them while it was still forming, so those elements were put together to form our planet.

The reason behind this is that stars fuse some elements together. Our sun, for example, uses hydrogen fusion and creates helium. Eventually, our sun will fuse helium into carbon, and then the carbon core will become a white dwarf once the sun has died. However, in very massive stars, this process of fusing one element into another goes on past carbon a few more times and stops at iron, because the end product of fusing iron comes out to be loss instead of a gain, so the core remains as iron until the star "explodes" as a supernova. Then the star is hot enough to fuse much heavier elements (gold, for example) while it's still a supernova.

Just something I learned in Astronomy that was cool.

[Bank]

Overfucking. Damnit, 3 kids is enough...


...mormans...