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Re: Yuri receives hypocrite of the week award (was Re: Ecological Economics and Entropy)





jw <jwas@ix.netcom.com> wrote (along with a lot of other fantasy-world
ramblings)

> But we can be *certain* that at least many trillions of 
> human  beings can be sustained comfortably in this solar 
> system alone. When we get that many (not soon, if ever!), 
> we can take another look. It will all look very different
> then; no use second-guessing our wise descendants.
> 

Not without an unlimited, essentially free source of readily available
energy.  Fresh water supplies will effectively limit human populations on
earth to figures FAR, FAR below your 'trillions', and off-planet habitation
within the solar system will require HUGE energy supplies to make any large
colonies viable.  We aren't doing that great of a job providing for the 6
billion we currently have.

I think you (and most people in general) have no real feel for large
numbers--10^12 (a trillion in American usuage) has little meaning for most.
 Take the U.S. budget at $1.5 x 10^12.  If collected in dollar bills and
stacked up, the pile would reach over a third of the way to the moon.  Even
such 'silly' examples as this are useless in trying to convey the meaning
of numbers like 6.02x10^23 (the number of atoms or molecules in on gram
atomic/molecular weight of a material).  Eighteen grams of water contain
this many molecules (also known as Avagadro's number), but how many is
that?  The ESTIMATED number of atoms in the Universe is around 10^80.  Read
a good book on Cosmology to see where such numbers come from, how we know
as much as we do about the Universe, and what the limits to your kinds of
fantasies are. 

Rick Tarara



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