In the back of my mind (though I can't remember where I heard it originally) was the idea to drill holes and flood the surrounding rock with high pressure water, which would be heated by the rock and then extracted continually.

At the time, I vaguely remember hearing somebody protest that eventually the heat would cool the rock permanently during this process, with some possible land disruption consequences.

Edited July 4, 20223 yr by HiFlyer

30 minutes ago, Wildblue said:

What will happen if we drain too much energy, to name one question i would have. Would that perhaps ultimately have a minuscule but disastrous effect on the rotation of Earth for instance?

 

No. You might be underestimating how much energy is in the mantle. If we extracted only a mere 0.1% it would power all our needs for two million years.

In reality, we would be extracting far less than that over a far shorter period.

1 hour ago, Wildblue said:

Considering the havoc we are wreaking to the planet already, i am very skeptic to the wisdom of mankind.

I think what we have done to the planet is an indicator that mankind is not a species native to the planet.  That we could have been put here as an experiment by some higher intelligence.  We could be a long term galactic petri dish.

All the other species on Earth seem to have a niche where they thrive.  We destroy their niches or habitat to make room for our own.  Then as we learn more and more we crowd out everything else.

Noel

1 hour ago, birdguy said:

I think what we have done to the planet is an indicator that mankind is not a species native to the planet.  That we could have been put here as an experiment by some higher intelligence.  We could be a long term galactic petri dish.

All the other species on Earth seem to have a niche where they thrive.  We destroy their niches or habitat to make room for our own.  Then as we learn more and more we crowd out everything else.

Noel

What you say is true, but I don't believe that humanity is "bad" or destructive necessarily.  We can recognize our mistakes and try to fix them.  Yes, there are always those few who are selfish and who don't care about the future and do destructive things, but the bulk of humanity is not like that and is willing to be reasonable and try to correct our mistakes.  The trick is to agree on exactly what should be done and how.

The fundamental problem is that there are simply too many people.  I see it in the USA, where cities continue to grow excessively, and now even smaller towns are getting too crowded as the folks with means escape the cities for the suburbs and smaller towns.  For example, the West is running out of water, which tends to happen when millions of people move into an area which is arid and mostly desert.  All those people need resources and energy.  Technology such as cars and air conditioners has exacerbated the resource problem, but even if we removed modern technology, all the billions of people in the world would still need to produce food and burn wood for heat and cooking, which would be detrimental to the environment and atmosphere. 

Anyway, the more people there are, the more resources required.  Is it fair to say, though, that we're bad or unwise because over time our population has gotten too large?  I don't think so, as the natural instinct of humans is to procreate, just like the natural instinct of a virus is to survive and replicate itself.  It doesn't make a virus "bad", but it does make it dangerous.  Therefore, it is true that our overpopulation has become dangerous in multiple ways.   

Now, what do we do about it?  All the solar panels, wind turbines, and geothermal power plants in the world ain't gonna fix the core problem.

Dave

Dave, 'bad' isn't the word I would use.  More like undisciplined.  And for more than a few add greedy.  What two elderly people like my wife and I throw away in garbage every week could feed a couple of people in say, Bangladesh, for a week or maybe more.

You are right about too many people.  The planet can only support so many.  Like overcrowding a goldfish bowl with a dozen goldfish but only dropping in enough food to feed half that many.

We have the excess food and we try to deliver it where needed but there simply isn't enough transportation.

If the experiment were repeated on another planet like ours would the results be the same?  Is the way we behave the natural order of our species?

 

34 minutes ago, dave2013 said:

All the solar panels, wind turbines, and geothermal power plants in the world ain't gonna fix the core problem.

We, as a species, need to change our behavior and that won't be easy.  In fact at this stage of the game I would say impossible unless something catastrophic happens and we have to start over.  But we just might repeat the mistakes of the past.

There's an excellent novel that addresses this very problem.  'A Canticle for Leibowitz' by Walter M. Miller Jr.  I highly recommend it.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic social science fiction novel by American writer Walter M. Miller Jr., first published in 1959. Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the book spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself.

Noel

 

Edited July 4, 20223 yr by birdguy

2 hours ago, birdguy said:

I think what we have done to the planet is an indicator that mankind is not a species native to the planet.  That we could have been put here as an experiment by some higher intelligence.  We could be a long term galactic petri dish.

All the other species on Earth seem to have a niche where they thrive.  We destroy their niches or habitat to make room for our own.  Then as we learn more and more we crowd out everything else.

Noel

I can relate to that. The older i get the more it all feels like a giant experiment or even punishment. Sometimes i think earth is a galactic penal colony or a learning school for us. When we finally learned all the lessons of nature, we're allowed to live on a planet where there's more peace and harmony already present. It's like they say in the east, you come back on earth life after life until you learned all lessons and then you go to nirvana (not the band of course).

15 hours ago, birdguy said:

There's an excellent novel that addresses this very problem.  'A Canticle for Leibowitz' by Walter M. Miller Jr.  I highly recommend it.

I also highly endorse this book. I first read it about 40 years ago, and recently borrowed the Kindle version for a re-read.

20 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

In the back of my mind (though I can't remember where I heard it originally) was the idea to drill holes and flood the surrounding rock with high pressure water, which would be heated by the rock and then extracted continually.

At the time, I vaguely remember hearing somebody protest that eventually the heat would cool the rock permanently during this process, with some possible land disruption consequences.

 

Yeah that sounds dodgy. The new gyrotron method is far safer I would imagine. There  is still water involved to extract the energy but there shouldn't be any cracks in the bore hole as its lined with glass basically due to the extreme heat from the gyrotron. 

17 hours ago, dave2013 said:

The fundamental problem is that there are simply too many people.

 

Coincidentally, Sabine Hossenfelder has just released a video on overpopulation. This was in response to Elon Musk claiming there are too few of us not too many. 😯

Sabine concludes...

 

Conservative estimate's are that population will peak relatively soon below the planets "carrying capacity". 17:35 in video. Both the "doomsters" and the "boomsters" are wrong she tells us. Doomsters are wrong to think overpopulation is the problem but right in thinking that we have a problem. The boomsters are right in thinking that the world can hold many more people but wrong in thinking that we are going to pull it off. She goes on to say that Musk is right, in that if we play our cards more wisely we could certainly squeeze more people on the planet. 

I say don't squeeze more on... send them to Mars. 😁

 

 

Edited July 5, 20223 yr by martin-w

19 hours ago, birdguy said:

I think what we have done to the planet is an indicator that mankind is not a species native to the planet.  That we could have been put here as an experiment by some higher intelligence.

 

Nah, seriously doubt it. Evolution theory is pretty definitive on this. We are just apes that branched off from the other apes and evolved our current abilities. Greater than 98% of our DNA is the same as a Bonobo and Chimpanzee. What we do with that 2% difference is significant though. No evidence of alien tampering or that we are alien to this Earth and planted here. The genetic codes of our primitive fish ancestors are even still with us. 

19 hours ago, birdguy said:

We have the excess food and we try to deliver it where needed but there simply isn't enough transportation.

6 hours ago, martin-w said:

Evolution theory is pretty definitive on this. We are just apes that branched off from the other apes and evolved our current abilities.

If the experiment was to succeed then it would have to start from the beginning.  Which apes did we descend from that had the DNA to give us intelligence and opposed thumbs?  Perhaps an ape the experimenters chose to add human DNA to?  To watch us grow and develop over the millennia they would have to start at the beginning.

We don't know how long the generations are of intelligent beings that might have been capable of doing this but the observations could have continued for generations.

It's a plausible theory.  It's something we do to lower forms of life ourselves.  Cloning, stem cell research, and inadvertently introducing species like the Burmese Boa Constrictor into the Everglades of Florida and the Kudzu from Southeast Asia to our own deep south.

Noel

2 hours ago, birdguy said:

  Which apes did we descend from that had the DNA to give us intelligence and opposed thumbs?  Perhaps an ape the experimenters chose to add human DNA to?  To watch us grow and develop over the millennia they would have to start at the beginning.

or maybe a Spirit impressed His thoughts onto the minds of any ape that would listen and then evolution and further 'training' produced what we are now.  People still 'follow God' or say 'the devil made me do it'.  

"I will write my laws in their hearts and in their minds"

 

3 hours ago, birdguy said:

Which apes did we descend from that had the DNA to give us intelligence and opposed thumbs?

 

Doesn't work like that Noel. Its not like "oh look, there's the intelligence gene" we must have got it from "X" ape.

Rather, its an evolutionary process. Currently, the best theory is that our larger brains and intelligence was a gradual adaption that took place as a response to living in large groups. Its a hypothesis of course, there are other suggestions, but its not a specific gene from a specific ape. 

 

3 hours ago, birdguy said:

It's a plausible theory. 

 

With zero evidence. Maybe it was cats. 😺😲😉