Abandon Earth or Face Extinction, Stephen Hawking Warns -- Again

"Quadibloc" wrote in message
...
On Aug 19, 6:52 pm, "John M" wrote:

So let's spend all our scientific resources to...run
from the problem, instead of fixing it?

No.

But we live on an Earth with *other people* on it. Some of whom we
can't control.

I beg to differ, the military dominance of the United States right now
is at an historic high. And we are moving ahead of the rest at an
even faster pace. All that star-wars research, started back in the
80's, are coming online.


There are countries like Russia


Militarily speaking, the Russians rank right up there with Poland
or Australia. But more to the point, the Russians are our friends
trading partners and ally. A few sore spots here and there, but
nothing of significance.


and China

Is entirely dependent upon economic trade with the US.
And their military is almost entirely defensive. But China
is the problem, the dictatorial empire of the Chinese
Communist Party spans a fifth of humanity. Do you see
any parallel with the former empire of the Soviet Union?

It's only a matter of time before China becomes a half dozen
brand new economic and military allies of the United States.

You still fail to grasp the simplicity of reality, democracy, just
like Nature, always wins in the end. It is the final probable
state of any sufficiently complex system.


with nuclear
weapons
that can't be counted upon to work together with the United
States for the good of everyone.
The major part of our resources should be spent on fixing the problem,
for the good of the largest portion of humanity.


Right, and how is building a colony for a /select few people/ helping
the bulk of humanity?


However, it's stupid to blindly believe that we're 100% guaranteed to
fix all the problems. Just one problem not fixed is enough to kill us
all.


What? Life is the most resilient thing in the entire known universe.
Look up the word fragile, life is the opposite of that.


Having space colonies within the solar system is not an impossibility.
And it can even be a way to help fix the problem on Earth.

About the most inefficient, expensive and slowest way of doing that.
I believe the optimistic timeline for putting four people on the Moon
for a few weeks was about twenty years. Forty years for a similarly
token presence on Mars.

I'm not that patient, no one is. You can't get funds for something
that won't be completed in the lifetime of the people...paying
for it. President Bush's space "Vision" didn't last six months
after he left office, and that was only because President Obama
was busy.


If the off-Earth population grows, then...
It can deflect asteroids that might hit Earth.

This isn't an episode of Star Trek.
Although, the military dominance of the United
States et al, as compared to the 'uncivilized' world
is becoming akin to comparing Star Fleet to the
wandering Berjoran tribes.

Before long, every place on Earth will be within
the range of US speed of light weaponry
available at the 'speed of need', in their words.


It can provide energy or other resources to Earth.

We should travel to the outer solar system for energy?
There's enough solar energy bathing the Earth to provide
a hundred times the energy we could ever conceivably use
in the next thousand years.


By showing that freedom will survive, even should some tyrant conquer
the whole Earth, it will help limit the ambitions of tyrants, by
showing that they can never win in their goal of exterminating human
freedom everywhere.


Why is it people seem to assume a space colony would automatically
be some shining example of society? Just the opposite is more
likely, a military-like outpost where democracy is some sort of
'alien' concept. Such a small isolated society is far more likely
to end up in a cult-like mass suicide than anything else.

Besides, unless you're planning on building a colony for six
BI:LLION people, what's the point? If you expect me to
pay through the nose so a few people can run away
and l e a v e u s b e h i n d to face calamity, will
screw that, and the horse it rode in on.


John Savard



Jonathan

On Aug 20, 7:23*pm, "John M" wrote:

Militarily speaking, the Russians rank right up there with Poland
or Australia. But more to the point, the Russians are our friends
trading partners and ally. A few sore spots here and there, but
nothing of significance.

The money from natural gas exports to Europe has funded a massive
buildup of the Russian military; it's much stronger than it was under
Yeltsin.

And the invasion of a democratic nation under a false pretext,
annexing part of its territory and thus eliminating the Caucasus
mountains as a natural barrier between it and Russia, is not nothing
of significance.

Russian separatists in Georgia murdered Georgian police officer,
forcing the Georgian government to send troops to enter the
predominantly Georgian areas to restore order. Russia *falsely*
claimed that Georgian forces massacred thousands of ethnic Russian
civilians, and used this as a pretext for their invasion.

Lives were lost in this invasion, and contemporary news accounts also
claimed that sexual assaults took place.

Medvedev and Putin are guilty of murder: their act of aggression
caused the deaths of one or more innocent persons. They must be
brought to justice.

It's as simple as that. Medvedev and Putin are not so big that they
are to be judged by a different standard than other men. They
committed aggression, wholly without any justification whatsoever. The
invasion of Georgia, in fact, parallels Hitler's invasion of the
Sudetenland.

A more benign interpretation is that this was some kind of tit-for-tat
gesture in response to U.S. intervention in Kosovo. Since the U.S.
acted to protect innocent people from ethnic cleansing, this is no
excuse.

Serbia, in that case, disturbed the peace by sending soldiers into
Kosovo to destroy people's houses. And Serbia has still not been made
to pay for every single bit of property its forces have destroyed -
the Kosovar Albanians have had to rebuild their homes themselves at
their own expense.

It is really very simple. There should be zero room for acts of
aggression. Thus, Kim Il Jung should be rotting in a Japanese prison
cell for his acts against Japanese citizens.

I suppose you are going to try to claim that the United States engaged
in aggression against Iraq or Afghanistan as a reply to the above.

In the case of Afghanistan, there was September 11, 2001. Remember it?
Afghanistan tried to shield Osama bin Laden from justice.

In the case of Iraq, there was the invasion of Kuwait. Remember that?
At that time, the U.S. forbore, due to political considerations, to
demand the unconditional surrender of Iraq after it committed two acts
of aggression - the invasion of Kuwait, and the launching of missiles
into Israel. But Iraq's continued existence as an independent state
was *conditional* on its strict adherence to certain conditions, among
them full cooperation with weapons inspections.

Iraq did NOT cooperate fully with weapons inspections. TV news
coverage, before the invasion of Iraq, showed how people were being
sent on ahead to warn places that were about to be visited by weapons
inspectors.

In the post-9/11 world, there was no longer any room to tolerate the
slightest risk of weapons of mass destruction in irresponsible hands
that could conceivably hand them to al-Qaeda.

That this turned out to be a face-saving gesture, a bluff on the part
of Saddam Hussein - and thus a terrible miscalculation on his part -
is irrelevant. The United States did right to err on the side of
caution.

Is entirely dependent upon economic trade with the US.
And their military is almost entirely defensive. But China
is the problem, the dictatorial empire of the Chinese
Communist Party spans a fifth of humanity. Do you see
any parallel with the former empire of the Soviet Union?

It's only a matter of time before China becomes a half dozen
brand new economic and military allies of the United States.

There's no guarantee of that.

What? *Life is the most resilient thing in the entire known universe.
Look up the word fragile, life is the opposite of that.

Yes, I'm sure there will at least be microbes left on the Earth in
almost any case.

Civilization and freedom, however, are not equally resilient.

We should travel to the outer solar system for energy?
There's enough solar energy bathing the Earth to provide
a hundred times the energy we could ever conceivably use
in the next thousand years.

Well, if we did need solar energy from space, that could be obtained
from Earth orbit. If someday we need more biomass, the outer solar
system could supply ammonia and methane as raw materials for that.

But that is the distant future.

Solar power on Earth may well be an energy source that can be more
thoroughly exploited, although current technology doesn't seem to be
able to make it work for us the way one might like. Solar collectors
take up lots of room and are expensive for the amount of energy they
produce.

But nuclear reactors - specifically breeder reactors, and particularly
the thorium breeder to further extend fuel supplies - are a medium-
term solution to our energy needs which indeed is much more practical
than solar power satellites, requiring vastly smaller capital
investments.

So I advocate going to nuclear to stop global warming, and after
abundant energy has lifted the economy into a healthy state, *then* we
will be able to afford to go to space.

Besides, unless you're planning on building a colony for six
BI:LLION people, what's the point?

If we can prevent a calamity, we should do so.

Having a backup plan in the case of a calamity we can't prevent,
however, does have a point.

It can prevent the calamity *just by existing*. If megalomaniac
dictators know that freedom exists outside their reach, that may give
them pause.

It can help the billions on Earth. Not immediately. But human beings
*reproduce themselves*. So you send, say, a hundred people out there
to build a space colony and live there.

After a while, without spending the money on a lot of rockets to
launch more people up, you have perhaps a hundred million people... or
even a hundred billion... living outside Earth's gravity well.

At that point, they will have gigantic resources that we don't on
Earth. They would be in a position to help Earth in many ways.

Or to invade it and reclaim it for our civilization and way of life if
a calamity happened and Earth became enslaved.

John Savard

"Quadibloc" wrote in message
...
On Aug 20, 11:08 am, Doug Freyburger wrote:

But your protrayal of whoever it is you mean is so political and
insulting that it tells me quite enough.

Apparently my post was unclear. The only person I meant to insult was
the poster to whom you had been replying, claiming that
"conservatives" both didn't worry about doomsday, and yet were
motivated by the prospect of it.

That made the post so weird that I couldn't answer it.

I have no issue with your statements that we need to avoid failing to
plan, and we need to expand to keep our options.

John Savard

======================

Frontier Universe:

Increasing room to maneuver; increasing margins for error. More dimension.
More dimensions. Tolerances. Local wars.



Versus World Utopia:

Decreasing room to maneuver; Ever fewer margins for error. Less dimension.
Fewer dimensions. Zero tolerances. Total war.

GLB

======================

"Quadibloc" wrote in message
...
On Aug 20, 7:23 pm, "John M" wrote:


The money from natural gas exports to Europe has funded a massive
buildup of the Russian military; it's much stronger than it was under
Yeltsin.

They are recovering, but their navy has gone from some 140 frigates
and larger in 1985, to about 25 ships, frigates and larger, today.
They have one carrier and five cruisers today.

We have a dozen of these, with two more on the way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz_(CVN-68)

Most don't know we also have ten of these, with four more
on the way. Each one of these can conquer your typical
small nation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Bataan_(LHD-5)

Not to mention some 72 of these things in two classes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arleigh...lass_destroyer

Plus we have over 50 of these scary things swimming about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Kentucky_(SSBN-737)

Need I go on? It only gets worse with the Air Force, and
our space and laser capabilities which are coming soon.


In the post-9/11 world, there was no longer any room to tolerate the
slightest risk of weapons of mass destruction in irresponsible hands
that could conceivably hand them to al-Qaeda.
That this turned out to be a face-saving gesture, a bluff on the part
of Saddam Hussein - and thus a terrible miscalculation on his part -
is irrelevant. The United States did right to err on the side of
caution.

Hussein deserved it on principle alone. I'm a hawk at heart.
Bush made the mistake, or was forced into, presenting a
single smoking gun justification for Iraq. When in fact
there were a dozen perfectly good reasons. And I still
think the dirty rotten French spirited everything out of
Iraq just before we invaded.


Civilization and freedom, however, are not equally resilient.


That's an incorrect view, intelligence is far more capable
of changing the environment to suit its needs.
Humans are far more adaptive than any other
form of life. Even to the point of diverting asteroids
someday soon. Any particular government or life might be
fragile, but societies and life will spring back quickly
after almost any disturbance.

Humans have only been on the planet in numbers since
the last ice age ended only a few thousand years ago
And we've already made this planet 'our bitch'.


Jonathan

On Aug 23, 5:38*pm, "John M" wrote:
"Quadibloc" wrote:

The money from natural gas exports to Europe has funded a massive
buildup of the Russian military; it's much stronger than it was under
Yeltsin.

They are recovering, but their navy has gone from some 140 frigates
and larger in 1985, to about 25 ships, frigates and larger, today.
They have one carrier and five cruisers today.

It could well be that their _conventional_ forces have run down while
the money has been spent on the *important* elements of Russia's
military.

If one is concerned with the question "Could the United States, with
reasonable safety to its people, launch a pre-emptive strike against
the former Soviet Union, and compel its unconditional surrender", the
size of Russia's _conventional_ forces is an irrelevancy.

What Russia _has_ been considerably improving and beefing up have been
its *nuclear* forces.

It is true that nuclear forces are essentially _defensive_ in nature,
while it would be only conventional forces that are used to _project_
power. So, if their conventional forces are small, they will not yet
be going on a rampage or causing a ruckus. But what little they do,
they can do with impunity if their nuclear forces are in place.

Hence, Russia's invasion of Georgia didn't result in Russia being
blasted off the face of the Earth, or at least Russia tendering its
unconditional surrender to the United States as Medvedev and Putin
were handed over to Georgian authorities for trial and execution for
the war crime of aggression.

To me, that simple fact is enough to show that we are in a crisis,
having returned to the unhappy conditions of the Cold War, where the
United States has to tolerate injustice in the world instead of ending
the injustice and bringing its perpetrators to justice.

John Savard

"Quadibloc" wrote in message
...

What Russia _has_ been considerably improving and beefing up have been
its *nuclear* forces.

But nuclear weapons have no credibility in the industrialized world.
They are only credible in the hands of some dictator trying
to fend us off.


It is true that nuclear forces are essentially _defensive_ in nature,
while it would be only conventional forces that are used to _project_
power. So, if their conventional forces are small, they will not yet
be going on a rampage or causing a ruckus. But what little they do,
they can do with impunity if their nuclear forces are in place.

Hence, Russia's invasion of Georgia didn't result in Russia being
blasted off the face of the Earth, or at least Russia tendering its
unconditional surrender to the United States as Medvedev and Putin
were handed over to Georgian authorities for trial and execution for
the war crime of aggression.


I can't think of any realistic situation where a nuclear exchange
was possible between the US and Russia. And it would be
a David and Goliath situation militarily in the remote chance
it would go that far. The US military isn't just an order of
magnitude larger, but more importantly its has no glaring
weaknesses, we have far more complete capabilities.
Our technology has moved ahead at a breathtaking pace
while the rest of the world stagnates at best.
Even in the waning days of WW2, the disparity between our
military and the rest of the world has never been greater
than today.

We've almost finished doing what most in the world considered
absolutely impossible. Which is to plant the flag in the heart
of Islam, and take head-on all the terrorists the world
has to offer, and win. We were the only one that thought
that possible, the rest of the world thought we were insane.


To me, that simple fact is enough to show that we are in a crisis,
having returned to the unhappy conditions of the Cold War, where the
United States has to tolerate injustice in the world instead of ending
the injustice and bringing its perpetrators to justice.


That's the great thing about the end of the cold war, no more fear
of nuclear annihilation. Only the rogue state. So with few exceptions
our military can now be far more assertive and act as it should.

For instance, remember when Myanmar had that hurricane but
wouldn't let in foreign aid workers? We placed four of those
amphibious assault ships, with some 6000 marines, within
site of their coast, and they quickly changed their minds.

There is a clear boundary between good and evil, and it takes
the form of democracy vs dictatorship. Natural vs man-made
control systems.

One creates, the other destroys.


John Savard