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Re: Yuri receives hypocrite of the week award (was Re: Ecological Economics and Entropy)
In article <01bbe1f3$722a54e0$6b093593@Rick> "Richard W. Tarara" <rtarara@saintmarys.edu> writes:
>
> 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
Yes, but what is the actual numerical argument about how fresh water supplies
limit population?
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
During the last years of the Second Millenium, the Earthmen complained
a lot.
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