Is humanity doomed?

[wolfgamesstudios]

I was watching the road warrior recently (great movie if you havnt seen it ) and i was thinking... what if we run out of fuel to even leave the planet in case we need to do so? we are high past peak oil, and personally, i think this is the beggining times for the ending of all civilization. your thoughts/ feelings/ comments?

 

[Shru1kan]

and i was thinking... what if we run out of fuel to even leave the planet in case we need to leave?

That, my friend, is a head scratcher.

 

[DeadlyYellow]

It's called an alternative fuel source.

 

[Worgen]

ehh there are other methods of achieving orbit besides fossel fuels, in fact Im pretty sure we dont really use them for rocket fuel

 

[Charli]

As I was saying the universe is just dooomed...dooomed doomed doooooomed.


And now for somthing completely different! Nothing lasts forever, but we always get inventive when the push is inevitably coming to shove. So don't sweat it too much.

 

[delet]

Sorry, but the beginning of the end happened a long time ago, buddy. If you haven't noticed, natural selection has been all but abandoned. How can we put forth the best possible specimens of society to continue a string of reproduction that will lead to a superior race of beings much more fitted to survive in the world in which we ourselves destroyed without Natural Selection?

More and more idiots are polluting the crowds. Corruption is polluting through life (pun?) and religions are also polluting. We, as a race, are polluting ourselves with our own idiocies and we have destroyed the cure to this disease with the very act of letting the disease live!

...

Thank you, OP. You've reminded me of more of my reasons to hate humanity again. I'll be in the corner for a while...

 

[LinkX007]

Society is pretty much doomed anyways. If it isn't killing for oil, or killing for land, we will end up killing each other just to prove that 2012 will be the end of the world.

Good luck everyone

 

[BlindMessiah94]

I'm pretty sure solutions to fossil fuels where invented decades ago. But we wouldn't have any wars to fight over oil without keeping it as our main fuel source so we keep at burning matter like it's the stone age. I mean seriously. It's 2010 and we are burning oil?
Where are my damn flying cars and teleportation machines and hyperspace drives?!

 

[Frankydee]

I've always kinda thought we were fucked from the get go.

How I sort of imagine it'll turn out. [http://threepanelsoul.com/view.php?date=2008-06-30]

 

[grimsprice]

Cool.

Good thing we don't use fossil fuels to get into space. Good thing we use Liquid Hydrogen and Liquid Oxygen. Which can be electrolized from water.

Besides, the fusion power plants will be charging our electric cars in 25 years time. Don't worry about it.

 

[Kollega]

[HEADING=2]No it isn't, and everyone who says otherwise is a Nietzsche Wannabe.[/HEADING]

We always managed to find our way out of the fuck-ups, because there were resolute and resourceful people among us. Some are here right now - just let them do their job properly. It'd take something really big (cosmic scale) to really "doom" the humanity.

And fossil fuels are an idiotic idea anyway - to paraphrase Mendeleev, i'd rather fuel my car with cash. Better solutions are on the way right now.

[HEADING=3]I'm so gonna get flamed and insulted for not hating Life and Universe and everything else.[/HEADING]

 

[Kollega]

Sorry, but the beginning of the end happened a long time ago, buddy. If you haven't noticed, natural selection has been all but abandoned.

Spoiler: XKCD has comic for everything.

Think about it.

 

[ThrobbingEgo]

Who wouldn't want to be Nietzsche?

Will people exist forever? No. There's pretty much infinite odds in favor of someone eventually dropping the ball, big time. All it'd take is 99 red balloons. But that doesn't really matter, does it? Because we're not, in any likelihood, going to see that happen. No one gets out alive.

 

[Pingieking]

Yeah, we're doomed. Probably not for the reasons you stated though.

We're doomed because there's an end to everything, meaning that humans as a specie will eventually go extinct. It's only a matter of time. Perhaps we'll find some way of dooming ourselves, or we'll let entropy finish the job.

 

[lacktheknack]

It's called an alternative fuel source.

This, it's not like oil is the only fuel we have.

 

[RatRace123]

Oh well, not my problem.

 

[BlindMessiah94]

I'm pretty sure solutions to fossil fuels where invented decades ago. But we wouldn't have any wars to fight over oil without keeping it as our main fuel source so we keep at burning matter like it's the stone age. I mean seriously. It's 2010 and we are burning oil?
Where are my damn flying cars and teleportation machines and hyperspace drives?!

Not economically viable solutions, otherwise, we would have used them.
Oil is the most economical solution next to coal. That is why we use it.

This is also why we need regulations.
The needs of the people are more important than the needs of the market.

Yes but when is someone going to find a Stargate!

 

[Noone From Nowhere]

Maybe it will be doomed someday but it likely won't be for a while yet. By then, there might already be some other sapient species ready to help humanity out of its dillema (or to take its place), so it's no big deal, at least it shouldn't concern you too much.

Our species has survived all manner of natural disasters up until this point, so we probably don't need to bail out of planet Earth just because something nasty looms on the horizon. More importantly, where would we go, anyway? Earth is the only planet capable of supporting human life that we know of, being the place where Humanity is from as it is. It would be a lot more work to terraform some other planet or find another 'M-Class' planet than it would be to restore this planet to proper working order.

As for Peak Oil, we'd all just have to use other fuel sources then scale back for a bit. Cooking oil can be used in modified combustion engines. We could all probably use hamsters on exercise wheels to supplement the rest. Be creative!

 

[Internet Kraken]

[HEADING=2]No it isn't, and everyone who says otherwise is a Nietzsche Wannabe.[/HEADING]

We always managed to find our way out of the fuck-ups, because there were resolute and resourceful people among us. Some are here right now - just let them do their job properly. It'd take something really big (cosmic scale) to really "doom" the humanity.

And fossil fuels are an idiotic idea anyway - to paraphrase Mendeleev, i'd rather fuel my car with cash. Better solutions are on the way right now.

[HEADING=3]I'm so gonna get flamed and insulted for not hating Life and Universe and everything else.[/HEADING]

Thank you. People forget that humanity has overcome many serious problems throughout history. we aren't dumb enough to let our current crisis be the end of us.

I believe that the only thing that could truly doom the human race is something beyond our power.

 

[Labyrinth]

Sorry, but the beginning of the end happened a long time ago, buddy. If you haven't noticed, natural selection has been all but abandoned. How can we put forth the best possible specimens of society to continue a string of reproduction that will lead to a superior race of beings much more fitted to survive in the world in which we ourselves destroyed without Natural Selection?

Here's your mistake. Natural selection isn't "The smartest" or "The biggest" it's "The most suited to their environmental condition." Darwinism doesn't save the world, it just keeps a species in it. Humans have adapted a society to keep themselves in the world. That's natural selection. Working together improves survival and breeding opportunity.

We've also done some phenominally stupid things which will test the survival capacity of living organisms on the planet. Those that can't adapt to warming and climate change will die out. Whether it's morally right or not, that's what's going to happen.

As to the topic, to my knowledge rockets are fuelled with various liquid propellants [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_rocket_propellants] not all of which require fossil fuels. When using liquid hydrogen and oxygen, you only need water after all. As there is a finite amount of water on the planet us 'running out' of that isn't going to happen. However, the question is more whether we'll have the technology to utilise it and get enough of the population away, in the even of cataclysm, that they can start the species off again.

That relies more on the availability of habitable planets than anything. The ability to travel to them is also restricted by both fuel and technological advances. It's possible that we'll find something which will propel spacecraft to distant planets. As yet, no such luck.