Comment by aeve890
3 days ago
The sci-fi writes itself. Having averted climate catastrophe by switching to renewables 23rd century humans face the imminent catastrophe of disrupting the entire solar system dynamics after wrecking Earth-Moon orbital stability with their reckless energy extraction.
This one's free, KSR, sir.
> The sci-fi writes itself. Having averted climate catastrophe by switching to renewables 23rd century humans face the imminent catastrophe of disrupting the entire solar system dynamics after wrecking Earth-Moon orbital stability with their reckless energy extraction.
In the interest of avoiding spoilers, I will merely advise anyone interested in a story with similar themes and content to read Signal to Noise and its sequel A Signal Shattered by Eric S. Nylund. You may know him from his work on the Halo franchise or other popular games. I don’t really know his other work, since I first discovered him via his original works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Nylund
Less "23rd century" and more like "23,000,000th century".
I've read a lot of science fiction involving macroscale engineering on such levels, but I think even the most misanthropic science fiction writers have a hard time imagining a species that can start meaningfully affecting the orbital dynamics of their solar system but are clueless about possible negative side effects. By the time you're postulating such things, all the negative side effects that may leap to your mind involve energies many, many orders of magnitude smaller than the disruptions themselves, e.g., "oh no our satellite orbits", well, divert .000000000001% (I just hit some zeros, that's not calculated carefully) of the energy to fixing the satellite orbits. You're going to anyhow.
I've read a lot of science fiction involving macroscale engineering on such levels, but I think even the most misanthropic science fiction writers have a hard time imagining a species that can start meaningfully affecting the atmospheric composition of their planet but are clueless about possible negative side effects.
Misplaced misanthropy. The largest and most destructive atmospheric composition change in the history of the planet, against which our slight modification of CO2 levels is just a blip, was performed by completely unconscious species with zero capability for reflection or prediction of the results. Compared to the Great Oxygenation Catastrophe, we've done nothing.
On a more amusing note, if you're interested in a counterexample to your direct claim, which involves another catastrophe that makes the worst predictions of climate change look like human paradise, I would recommend to you "The Nitrogen Fix" by Hal Clement. I won't spoil what the catastrophe is in case you might be interested in reading it, but Google will spoil it readily if you prefer.
3 replies →
They don't have to be ignorant about the negative side effects, just unwilling to acknowledge or mitigate them. Could make for a good allegory about climate change.
> but are clueless about possible negative side effects
When has that ever stopped greed?
It’s raising the moons orbit and slowing the earths rotation. But changing either by even 1cm/second would take a long time even if you’re extracting 1 TW 24/7.
Those are rookie numbers. Exponential growth is real and lvl 1.2 in the Kardashian scale is the kpi.
edit: Kardashev scale
/s if not obvious
You can’t extract more energy from ocean tides than are actually in the ocean tides.
> Exponential growth is real
It’s really not. 99% of the energy used by humanity is still sunlight used to grow crops the same it’s been for thousands of years, and crop land use hasn’t been increasing exponentially. The majority of growth has been from efficiency gains not utilizing more energy.
Our ancestors realized irrigation and selective breeding allowed for more production from the same land. Fertilizer, better breeds, insecticides, meant more yield and automation meant less labor but the underlying energy input is unchanged barring increases in land under cultivation or the mouthes of livestock.
Instead many historic curves look exponential when you ignore the underlying population growth driving the whole thing and the recent reductions in fertility.
Fair enough.
But I have no doubt the energy gained by gifting the Kardashians escape velocity would be scientifically significant.
Funnily enough, this looks like the same surname with a Persian root for “stone carver” and Armenian and Russian surname suffixes. Given Persian origins, one can speculate that it was russified rather than armenified. So Kardashev’s ancestors might be Kardashians!