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Comment by derleth | Hacker News Reader

> It's also interesting how pessimistic the authors were about things like pollution (smog, ozone layer), traffic, and water supply.

I'm always amused at how many people in the 1970s were predicting global famine to hit the far-future world of a decade ago. Food lines and meat rationing and everything else in NYC, 2001.

Instead, we got an epidemic of Type II diabetes. So it goes.

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It's always worth reminding everyone of this:

Haber process http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

>>>Fertilizer generated from ammonia produced by the Haber process is estimated to be responsible for sustaining one-third of the Earth's population

I think I first read about that here at HN and it still sticks in my mind.

Something to consider when reading all the doom'n'gloom climate change stuff today.

Things change, including change.

Relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-nsU_DaIZE

http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

Not relevant to the video, did you bother watching it?

Except AGW is massively well-supported by the evidence.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-globa...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_c...

http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

The extent of the consequences 50 years from now and our ability to deal with said consequences are rather unknown.

No one said it wasn't.

If it wasn't for the Green Revolution in the 70's, then global famine would have been a very real possibility. Shows to tell you that one can't use past trends to predict the future.

more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution

"The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself." - Club of Rome, premier environmental think-tank, consultants to the United Nations, (a statement from the 1970s, if I'm not mistaken)

In a sense, the past can be used to predict the future, via movements and policies (usually backed by the same entities, IMO). If someone's fist, for example, is coming at you, the best thing is not to let it hit you (and therefore stop the motion) but to use its momentum to guide it where you want it to go. Meaning movements and policies may often start out small but when they grow they often become guided.

It's a great thing to take care of the planet we live on but one must be weary of the initiatives piggybacking on such an idea. Incremental change is pretty much a perfect weapon.

http://www.green-agenda.com/

> In a sense, the past can be used to predict the future, via movements and policies

Asimov coined it Psychohistory[0]. Reminds me that I never finished the Foundation series. (In my defense, it is quite a long series.)

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional)

The Green Revolution consisted of getting the best known farming techniques into wide use, and massive adoption of irrigation and artificial fertilizer. We don't have huge reserves of fresh water or petroleum or untested ag science that will let us further increase any of those reliably. I don't see us avoiding famine other than a rapid buildup in nuclear energy which we haven't started.

If we manage to get a better supply of energy we can desalinate sea water. Fusion is always 30 years in the future, but I think solar+wind+storage(hydrogen?) could do it. This is being worked on. Also, a great part of the current production is wasted, which could give us some more time.

There is also the option of building farm skyscrapers [1]; I've seen an acticle about a test run recently. However, these also need a lot of energy.

I think it can be done. The greatest problem I see is the upcoming climate change which will force us to change a lot of the traditional agricultural patterns and which could be very unforgiving.

The problem is not the increase of temperature or the rise in sea level (except for Asia), but the change in precipitation patterns. What we need is more information and the ability to share and get the information from/to everyone involved, especially the small farmers in remote communities.

[1] like so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming

One problem with predicting the future is that some assume no new technology can or will be created. This comment is a case-in-point.

Massive adoption and wide use of contraceptives would do the trick.

Academics were looking at the global population growth curve and extrapolating. They rightly predicted that exponential growth couldn't go on forever, so they predicted disaster. But they weren't willing or able to predict the degree to which the 1st world would be able to insulate itself from the population and food dynamics of the 3rd.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb

People have been claiming this exponential population growth would wreck us for 200 years, since Malthus.

Yeah, that was my point. At the time this article was written the most recent resurgence of this philosophy was epitomized by the book I cited.

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