Do you think we'll have another dark age(s)? Or are we past that kind of stuff?

[Article Accelerator]

Doc wrote:
Aside from the fact that the device in that article has about a 2% chance of actually working, has never been fired, is a decade behind schedule, cost more than 3 times its original budget, is being diverted for use as a weapons-testing platform, won't be ready for even small-scale testing until 2012 and even if it's successful at generating power would take another 30 years or more to replicate at the scale necessary to power a city... Yeah. Okay. That could be the solution.

Good one, Doc.

That's all in your opinion, right?

[Doc]

Article Accelerator wrote:
Good one, Doc.

That's all in your opinion, right?

Distilled from reading about the thing for many years.

I may have misremembered the odds of it working. It could be as high as 5%.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

Doc wrote:
[quote=N-OS X-tasy!]
Just this morning I came across this article about thorium nuclear reactors: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/

If the article is accurate, this could be the future.

The problem with all of these new nuclear technologies is that they are at least 30 years away from maturity... and have been since at least the 1950's.
You're a real ray of sunshine, Doc.

[guitarist]

What a great topic. Just in time for the holidays! Glad to see I'm not the only one having dark visions of modern civilization on the brink of catastrophe. Partly inspired, perhaps, by coming to the end of what's being called the worst decade in 50 years. Once we agree we have those thoughts, then it's just a matter of picking your poison! I agree about electricity. I think it could probably come down to something as basic as the power grid going down, resulting from some local or global disaster, and it having a ripple effect, followed by disease and wars and tribal conflicts and the whole works. Or a volcano. Or asteroid. Or climate shifts. Or a weaponized nuclear terror state.

For me, the signal of the impending Dark Ages was rise of Sarah Palin during the last year's election along with the Cult of Know Nothingism™ that followed her. It was appalling to witness so many people being able to blindly go against scientific proven fact and saying the earth was only 6,000 years old or whatever. And...and...wanting someone in power who believed it as well.

I absolutely agree. I found this rise every bit as disturbing. Another troubling signal of impending doom: the rise of the other candidate, ascending to become a fictional, radiant, all-knowing figure of benevolence and infinite wisdom. The irrational religious cult-like mass hypnosis that followed was equally blind, and now they're feeling the reality finally set in. it was appalling in exactly the same way, for the other half of the population who didn't share the sentiment, and were already feeling the reality.

This sticks out as questionable, not in the same category as planetary rotation.

41% of Americans think the threat from global climate change is exaggerated

Of course the threat of climate change is exaggerated. There are irrational propagandists for and against. Along with the anti-science climate change deniers, it's also a multi-billion dollar business for alarmists and scaremongers. For some, it's not about public policy, or science. For many, it's a belief system, a religion.

I think one way we seem headed for a Dark Ages, is that the elevation of Science and Reason that began during the Enlightenment, and the rise of Western Civilization, has been slowly unravelling, slipping back toward superstition, polarization, religious conflict, ignorance, and it feels (probably because of the events of the last decade) like it's speeding up.

Here's a timely quote:

"We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology."

Carl Sagan

[Doc]

If we're going to invest in emerging energy technologies, I think that we should be looking at bridge-tech to take us through the transition from fossil fuels to clean fission and fusion power.

For the immediate future, a combination of solar at homes and businesses, solar/solar-sodium in deserts, tide-power and wind. Add a "smart grid" to aid in conservation.

'Wouldn't want to bet on it, but community-sized nuclear power generators, geothermal and solar-satellite tech seems promising as the next bridge tech after that.

Then might come the age of fusion. Starting somewhere around the turn of the 22nd century is my guess.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

mattkime wrote:
[quote=N-OS X-tasy!]
I've been pondering this question for years. My opinion? Our civilization's complete and total reliance on electricity makes us EXTREMELY vulnerable.

i bet in the middle ages they said the same thing about fire
Fire is a natural phenomenon. 120V 60 Hz electricity isn't.

[PeterB]

OK, here's my $0.02 ...

I do think we are headed toward some sort of global catastrophe ... and sooner, not later. The reasons are mostly socioeconomic and ideological -- there are simply too many crazy fundamentalists out there who are completely convinced of their own mindset and willing to do whatever necessary. The question is, how will the global catastrophe come...



or



?

[Doc]

You forgot:


And:

[trisho.]

Article Accelerator wrote:
[quote=trisho.]
During the Dark Ages we know (and focus) about in Western history, while Europe was thumbing its asses and not washing its hands to avoid a plague, the rest of the world figured out engineering, calculus, cartography, gun powder and washing its hands.

Huh?

Calculus was invented by Newton and Liebnitz (Europeans, sort of). Washing hands for purposes of antisepsis was invented by some French guy (Pasteur) or some English guy (Lister) (Europeans, sort of). No region opened up more of the world (think "cartography" and Mercator) than The Old World (Europeans, sort of).

Gun powder and engineering were invented about 25,000 years ago (before the dawn of man and the creation of the World).
Apologies, I was thinking algebra but mistakenly wrote calculus. I was going through the higher maths I've taken. The other stuff still stands as being concepts other civilizations figured out before Europe. You don't need science to tell you to wash your hands in order to avoid a plague from spreading...along with disposing of bodies properly. That's common sense. The Mongols were using infected bodies as biological warfare back in the 1300s.

[Bill in NC]

Power grids go down daily in most of the world, even here in the western hemisphere.

People get by just fine by shifting their consumption away from electricity (propane for cooking & heating) and off-line water storage (cistern underneath the house, water from there pumped to a rooftop storage tank for gravity flow when the power's off)

Businesses use diesel or propane generators when the power's off (often)

Expensive compared to a centralized grid, but they make do.