mad max > star trek

 

I read most of this thread except for some of the really long walls of text (hypocrisy!) and I think its a good thread...pretty funny, pretty informative, and nice to see others with the same viewpoint as my own.

I will admit, despite driving a butt plug, I'm not into global warming either. Even if I was, I long ago offset whatever damage I cause by driving my Supra with straight pipes. That'll soon change since I'm tired of driving a dumb ecofriendly car that is actually more dangerous because it cant get out of its own way and is often overlooked for its size. I'll miss the mpgs and whatever, but srsly, fuck your emissions.

 

there is way too much stuff that requires corn, so they are making gas a bit cheaper but bringing up the costs in food because now they are using it in fuel.. either way we can use a new Black plague or something to thin the herd and make things cheaper for those that are left. OR stop taking care of other countries and bums.

 

I agree with you that this will probably be the likely path, although we can't say for sure. There may be some breakthrough in technology (such as fusion power, or breakthroughs in computing and other areas) that could keep us on the right track.

As of now, our future looks bleak. I don't think we ever even came close to touching the Type 1 threshold. When a civilization has reached Type 1 status, they can harness ALL the power from the planet (oceans, atmosphere, land, and the immediate influenced area of the earth's magnetic field). We are simply not there, and are still a stretch off. Our progression has been pretty linear with exceptions of the age of computer technology, which gave us a short spike on the curve. As we stand, we are about 0.7 on the scale, and our progress is starting to have a flatter slope, which isn't good, meaning we aren't even progressing linearly any more like we were in the 20th century.

Here is the chart to give you an idea:



In my personal opinion, I think we as a civilization are not tolerant enough of others to be able to globally unify. There are countries still developing and some areas of the world that want nothing to do with the progress of our civilization ("points to the Middle East"). That became all too clear in 2001. If we cannot resolve our social and political issues, than we are not going to make it as a civilization because we'll just end up destroying ourselves. It's a shame. It's kind of interesting to think that if you use the Drake Equation, we can calculate that there should be tens of thousands (perhaps millions) of advanced civilizations in our galaxy, yet the galaxy hasn't shown us any evidence of that. This could be due to the fact that they never made it to a Type 1 civilization. The transition from Type 0 to Type 1 is the most dangerous and rare transition for a civilization. If we can make it, the future of humanity (baring some extragalactic catastrophe) is set to succeed.

I agree with perdition79 that we are on the downward trend, but it's not 99.9% (it fluctuates all the time). Futurism is difficult to calculate, and we don't know how new advanced in technology will boost our civilization in the coming decades. That's why I said 50/50. If there are no new breakthroughs and we can't come to a resolve over our issues and intolerances as a civilization we are doomed (we may not totally destroy ourselves, but we could become stagnant in our evolution). If somehow we can manage to pull the world together (which at this point isn't very likely), humanity will have a very bright future.