Thread: Sand! Is civilization slipping through "It's fingers"?

I don't know how many of you have cultured bacteria in a shaker flask, but they have a standard growth curve that I often think of when considering our planet's population growth. This curve always happens when you have exponential growth with finite resources; and no matter your leanings politically or scientifically, the resources on this planet ARE finite.

Originally Posted by Utopian

I don't know how many of you have cultured bacteria in a shaker flask, but they have a standard growth curve that I often think of when considering our planet's population growth. This curve always happens when you have exponential growth with finite resources; and no matter your leanings politically or scientifically, the resources on this planet ARE finite.

So you're saying there are only so many coticules and J-nats ?

I have always wondered about these doom and gloom stories and how the oceans have risen hundreds of feet, we are all going to die. Then I look at this and think - if the oceans have risen as much as they say - why isn't the end of the great wall of China - that was built in to the sea - under water?

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

So you're saying there are only so many coticules and J-nats ?

Yes, Jimmy, and that is why my old coticule photo you like so much is way out of date!

Originally Posted by Utopian

Yes, Jimmy, and that is why my old coticule photo you like so much is way out of date!

For those who weren't around back then ........

I think it is funny that you can produce that photo much faster than I can. The pile would be a lot bigger now, to a point that I would not want to risk piling them. It helps a little that about a dozen are out on loan!

I just can't let go of a coticule!

Originally Posted by Utopian

I think it is funny that you can produce that photo much faster than I can. The pile would be a lot bigger now, to a point that I would not want to risk piling them. It helps a little that about a dozen are out on loan!

I just can't let go of a coticule!

Randydance would have stacked his coticules but he would to have had to erect scaffolding and hire a crane with 100 foot of stick ...........

Originally Posted by Utopian

This curve always happens when you have exponential growth with finite resources; and no matter your leanings politically or scientifically, the resources on this planet ARE finite.

The question though is what is the timescale. The resources are finite but there is also 'the circle of life'.
The primary non-renewable resource on this planet is energy and the sun won't burn out for another 5 billion years which is about how long since this planet was formed. On that time scale life as we know it is just a spec and Elon Musk is spending all his money to spread it out of the Earth.

It seems to me that people care about themselves, to a lesser degree about their children, less about grandchildren and almost not at all three generations beyond. So, things that happen on their life's timescale they see as very important (problems with bees), things that happen on timescale that'd affect their children and grandchildren they see as may be important (climate change) and anything else is pretty much unimportant.

Baring a catastrophic event people will adapt to however the environment changes.

Population growth doesn't seem to be an issue - most countries have lower and much lower population density than the Netherlands and the Netherlands can probably support even double its population right now.

Hmmm. I find it intriguing that the Netherlands can support that much life. It is a very small area, but unlike countries like Canada, the majority of it is habitable. Due to it's small area that would have to be some pretty well managed food and water production and waste management. Energy I do not see as part of our limitations, clean water on the other hand, unmodified foods resources, those things I see as quite limited. I do believe that the earth shakings herself in a great cleanse, is becoming more and more likely, in part due to the lack of little shakes. We have made vast areas of the earth uninhabitable over the centuries. We have adapted our environment more than we have adapted, and in doing so created part of the "hole" we find ourselves looking out of. Alternating wild fires and floods, within the same region and environmental anomalies and bizarre weather conditions are actually becoming rather common. I hate to sound like a dooms-day-ist but there is mounting evidence.

Originally Posted by RezDog

Energy I do not see as part of our limitations, clean water on the other hand, unmodified foods resources, those things I see as quite limited.

The only difference between dirty and clean water is the energy that it takes to clean it - there is no technological barrier.
USA and Canada waste obscene amounts of food, which means that there are more than enough resources and bandwidth in the current way of production.

I am drinking Chablis tonight, which is only possible because when phylloxera threatened the extinction of chardonnay in that region people grafted it on labrusca rootstock from america and it was fine.