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Archive for the ‘risks’ tag: Page 2

Aug 24, 2012

The Fermi Paradox and Silent Planets

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, business, counterterrorism, defense, economics, education, engineering, ethics, events, existential risks, finance, futurism, geopolitics, habitats, human trajectories, life extension, lifeboat, media & arts, military, nuclear weapons, policy, space, sustainability, transparency

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120823150403.htm

In a recent comment John Hunt mentioned the most probable solution to the Fermi Paradox and as more and more planets are discovered this solution becomes ever more troubling.

Whether civilizations are rare due to comet and asteroid impacts- as Ed Lu recently stated was a possibility- or they self-destruct due to technology, the greater danger is found in human complacency and greed. We have the ability right now, perhaps as hundreds or even thousands of other civilizations had, to defend ourselves from the external and internal threats to our survival. Somewhat like salmon swimming upstream, it may not be life itself that is rare- it may be intelligent life that survives for any length of time that is almost non-existent.

The answer is in space. The resources necessary to leave Earth and establish off world colonies are available- but there is no cheap. Space travel is inherently expensive. Yet we spend billions on geopolitical power games threatening other human beings with supersonic fighters and robot missile assassins. The technology to defend civilization as a whole from the plausible threat represented by this “Great Silence” will cost us no more than what we spend on expensive projects like vertical take-off stealth fighters and hyper-velocity naval rail guns. But it is not the easy money of weapons; it is the hard money of vehicles and systems that must work far from Earth that is unattractive to the corporate profit motive.

Atomic spaceships capable of transporting colonists and intercepting impact threats are the prerequisites to safeguarding our species.

Aug 19, 2012

Artilects Soon to Come

Posted by in categories: complex systems, counterterrorism, cybercrime/malcode, defense, engineering, ethics, events, evolution, existential risks, futurism, information science, military, neuroscience, supercomputing

Whether via spintronics or some quantum breakthrough, artificial intelligence and the bizarre idea of intellects far greater than ours will soon have to be faced.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120819153743.htm

Aug 17, 2012

Ivanpah as the future

Posted by in categories: business, economics, education, engineering, ethics, finance, futurism, geopolitics, human trajectories, media & arts, physics, policy, space, sustainability, transparency

http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/solar/concentrating-solar/ni…tinue.html

Cover the deserts in solar energy plants and use electric trains for our transportation infrastructure; the best future I can imagine. A favorite Einstein quote is “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” Perhaps the number we are counting that counts is the amount of energy it would require for a future population of 10 billion people to live like we do in the west.

I was surprised to find a statement to the effect that only one method of generating this energy is practical; solar energy beamed to Earth from the Moon; from wiki–

Continue reading “Ivanpah as the future” »

Aug 16, 2012

GMO Armaggedon

Posted by in categories: biological, biotech/medical, business, chemistry, counterterrorism, defense, economics, education, engineering, ethics, events, existential risks, finance, futurism, geopolitics, homo sapiens, media & arts, military, open access, open source, policy, transparency

http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/bre87f15x-us-california-gmo/

Filthy Lucre will certainly destroy us all if we cannot even pass a law that makes food companies tell us what they are feeding us.

Aug 15, 2012

Approaching the Great Rescue

Posted by in categories: biological, biotech/medical, business, chemistry, complex systems, education, engineering, ethics, events, evolution, existential risks, futurism, geopolitics, homo sapiens, human trajectories, life extension, media & arts, neuroscience, philosophy, policy, singularity, sustainability, transparency

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120815131137.htm

One more step has been taken toward making whole body cryopreservation a practical reality. An understanding of the properties of water allows the temperature of the human body to be lowered without damaging cell structures.

Just as the microchip revolution was unforeseen the societal effects of suspending death have been overlooked completely.

The first successful procedure to freeze a human being and then revive that person without damage at a later date will be the most important single event in human history. When that person is revived he or she will awaken to a completely different world.

Continue reading “Approaching the Great Rescue” »

Aug 14, 2012

Boom and Bust for Wind Energy

Posted by in categories: business, economics, engineering, ethics, events, finance, futurism, human trajectories, policy, sustainability, transparency

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120814121119.htm

Just as the tax incentives that expired after the Carter Administration destroyed a whole new industry, and just as bio fuels recently turned into the bio bomb, wind energy is poised to crash.

We just will not stop destroying our future.

A coal fired power plant runs for years with very little maintenance, without being shut down or started up- the boilers make steam and turn the turbines and we cannot see the stars because we might as well burn those city lights all night long. It is impossible to compete with black rock you dig out of the ground and put on a train and turn into dependable cheap electricity.

Continue reading “Boom and Bust for Wind Energy” »

Aug 14, 2012

Hellalujah, the cannibal apocalypse is coming!

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, biological, biotech/medical, counterterrorism, defense, events, existential risks, military, policy, sustainability, transparency

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120814100302.htm

A couple months ago I was in the Seattle public library and overheard a pierced, tatooed, and quite smelly young man telling someone he was waiting for this F-d up civilization to collapse and hoping it would happen soon. The two most likely causes of such a collapse would be an asteroid or comet impact that would throw debris into the atmosphere and stop food production for several years, or a plague. A big impact or an engineered pathogen would be the extreme in this scenario and would not simply take us back to the stone age- it would render the human race extinct.

All the disenchanted Americans who look forward to surviving the collapse of the present world order might want to consider the less fortunate areas of this planet where there is no such rule of law or any agricultural or industrial infrastructure. North Korea has gone through the classic collapse cycle during recent bad winters and the government had to repeatedly deal with widespread cannibalism. It is one of those most perfect warnings where nothing could be more crystal clear to a race of intelligent and technologically advanced beings. And we ignore it.

Turn the sunlight off for a couple years in a row and everything we know would end because everything we eat would end. Think about it the next time you watch an episode of the Walking Dead or watch a movie like The Road. Not world war Z; world war C.

Aug 13, 2012

The Electric Septic Spintronic Artilect

Posted by in categories: biological, biotech/medical, business, chemistry, climatology, complex systems, counterterrorism, defense, economics, education, engineering, ethics, events, evolution, existential risks, futurism, geopolitics, homo sapiens, human trajectories, information science, military, neuroscience, nuclear weapons, policy, robotics/AI, scientific freedom, singularity, space, supercomputing, sustainability, transparency

AI scientist Hugo de Garis has prophesied the next great historical conflict will be between those who would build gods and those who would stop them.

It seems to be happening before our eyes as the incredible pace of scientific discovery leaves our imaginations behind.

We need only flush the toilet to power the artificial mega mind coming into existence within the next few decades. I am actually not intentionally trying to write anything bizarre- it is just this strange planet we are living on.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120813155525.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120813123034.htm

Aug 7, 2012

Party Like It’s 1912…

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, complex systems, economics, ethics, existential risks, fun, lifeboat, media & arts, rants

It’s the centennial year of the Titanic disaster, and that tragedy remains a touchstone.

The lifeboat angle is obvious. So is the ice hazard: then it was icebergs, now it’s comets.

But 100 years of expanding awareness has revealed the other threats we’re now aware of. We have to think about asteroids, nano- and genotech accidents, ill-considered high-energy experiments, economic and social collapse into oligarchy and debt peonage, and all the many others.

What a great subject for a Movie Night! Here are some great old movies about lifeboats and their discontents.

Continue reading “Party Like It's 1912...” »

May 25, 2012

Beyond the Heliosheath: ISM Traverse & The Local Fluff

Posted by in categories: engineering, futurism, space

It’s been a while since anyone contributed a post on space exploration here on the Lifeboat blogs, so I thought I’d contribute a few thoughts on the subject of potential hazards to interstellar travel in the future — if indeed humanity ever attempts to explore that far in space.

It is only recently that the Voyager probes provided us with some idea of the nature of the boundary of our solar system with what is commonly referred to as the local fluff, The Local Interstellar Cloud, through which we have been travelling for the past 100,000 years or so, and which we will continue to travel through for another 10,000 or 20,000 years yet. The cloud has a temperate of about 6000°C — albeit very tenuous.

We are protected by the effects of the local fluff by the solar wind and the sun’s magnetic field, the front between the two just beyond the termination shock where the solar wind slows to subsonic velocities. Here, in the heliosheath, the solar wind becomes turbulent by its interaction with the interstellar medium, and keeping the interstellar medium at bay from the inners of the solar system, the region currently under study by the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes. It has been hypothesised that there may be a hydrogen wall further out between the bow shock and the heliopause composed of ISM interacting with the edge of the heliosphere, another obstacle to consider with interstellar travel.

The short end of the stick is that what many consider ‘open space’ to traverse once we get beyond the Kuiper belt may in fact be many more mission-threatening obstacles to traverse to reach beyond our solar system. Opinions welcome. I am not an expert on this.

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