Most of the main Green policies are terrifying

Care to impart your oh so great wisdom on me

scientific progress is the ultimate fundamental driver of economic growth.
As long as we have science, we will have growth.

2) consumes materials to fuel progress.

Ever heard of Asteroid mining?


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Assuming we could develop the technology to mine and then send the minerals back to earth without burning up. We are limited to our solar system at best, although getting to the Oort Cloud and back in a single generation would be impressive, until we develop FTL if FTL is even posible.

FTL is almost certainly not possible; our best bet is multi-generational convoys using distortions in space-time continuum such as wormholes to reduce travel times.

But that's still thousands of years and we'd be talking about basicly picking one solar system clear and then moving on and destroying another.
in your opinion, you have no idea what the mineral wealth of the solar system is. And again you are hedging your bets on 'this will happen in the future' where as we should take the pessimistic line.

I have no problem in admitting I don't have that much of an understanding of economics. But I do understand that infinite economic growth on a finite planet is just not possible with the way we are doing things now, that is my area of concern. I don't have to be an expert car mechanic to see when a car has a flat tyre.

But that's still thousands of years and we'd be talking about basicly picking one solar system clear and then moving on and destroying another.
in your opinion, you have no idea what the mineral wealth of the solar system is. And again you are hedging your bets on 'this will happen in the future' where as we should take the pessimistic line.

The mineral wealth of the solar system is astounding Aph! Practically every element occurs somewhere in the solar system, asteroids themselves have common elements like iron, nickel & titanium which are used everywhere in society. The notion that we will run out of resources in the near future is laughable within the solar system. I am hedging my bets on this future because it is going to happen - we can send rovers to Mars and operate them from Earth but we can't send one to an asteroid? Admittedly there are difficulties but these are well within humanities reach in the coming decades.

The Green Party isn't the answer, especially after poor old Natalie's interview the other day which had some very enlightening revelations.


Posted from TSR Mobile

It's not nearly as obvious as you make it sound.

First, growth doesn't necessarily imply greater resource consumption. If I write a book that is better than any other book ever written, it is not necessary for more resources to be used to disseminate it. We can pulp other books and reprint them with my words, and still come out ahead. That example may sound contrived, but it's more common than you think. Computers have spent about fifty years becoming exponentially more capable while the input of natural resources required to build them has actually reduced.

Second, the earth is not a closed system. There is a constant influx of new resources in the form of energy from the sun. There is also a huge store of untapped energy on the earth (fissile and fusible materials, ultimately including water). While it's still some limit, human energy consumption is a minute fraction of a percent of solar energy flux alone. If you consider the earth as a closed system it might look like we've almost colonised it out, but even this is largely an artefact of our perception, since most of us spend a disproportionate amount of time in the very most densely populated areas. We have barely even scratched the surface of what is possible.

Well we could only realistically get to the asteroid belt and sure we could land on the asteroid but we couldn't send anything up which is big enough to mine significant amounts of minerals and then how many rovers do you know which have come back to earth? The issue is with launching off of a body which has no air thus nothing to push up against.

What at might they be?

Absolutely.

As we head almost inexorably towards fusion power and competition for the moon's Helium 3, the Greens are advocating policies that will result in other countries outcompeting us and getting access to practically infinite energy, as well as fusion based weaponry.

Just a quick note fusion weapons already exist. What do you think H-bombs are?

With fusion powered spacecraft we could practicalise constant acceleration so that we could reach alpha centauriy in, if i recall correctly, 100 years or so.

Fusion powered weapons.

Constant acceleration? No. As we aproach the speed of light our mass increases thus our acceleration decreases. But maybe a constant velocity. And also due to relativity it may seem like 100 years in the craft but it'd be a lot more in 'earth time'

We can't afford to go back to the moon... how on earth are we going to afford mining the solar system for resources? Neo-liberalism isn't going to pay for it.

You got that the wrong way around, and actually, given the still very low speeds the effect will be relatively minor, it's <0.05c you'll be looking at less than a year difference, in fact, actually, you're looking at something like a month