>-----Original Message-----
>From: ed babinski [mailto:ed.babinski@furman.edu]
>Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 2004 3:21 AM
>FRIVOLOUS pro-Ross comment: Couldn't Ross argue that the ability to drill
>deep holes, and the added ability, to invent mechanical engines that run
>on petroleum, together constitute a providential coincidence that only
>took place in the last hundred years, and together they assured that the
>petroleum would be sucked out at a high rate and found plenty of uses for?
Sure, but unless we find a new energy source really soon, we will be back to
the middle ages type of life style. One could argue that God intended that
slower life style for man and we have, with our hubris, over reached.
The fields producing today produce 83 million barrels per day. Those very
fields will be producing only 40 million barrels per day in 2020. Demand
will be 120 million barrels per day. That means that in the next 16 years,
we will have to put on production as many barrels per day as we have on line
today. No one I have shown that to in the oil industry thinks it will
happen.
> Also, if mankind had been created and arrived on the scene much sooner,
>he'd have been wiped out by the same cataclysm that drove the dinosaurs to
>extinction, oh yeah, and he'd have to fight off the dinosaurs too for that
>matter, while doing all that drilling, and later, fight off giant tree
>sloths, megatheriums, and guinea pigs the size of Volkswagons. Good thing
>man arrived on the geological scene when he did.
That won't work because mankind has been on earth at most, for 5 million
years, if you use H. erectus as the beginning of humankind, then we have
been here for 2 million. There have been lots of 2 million year periods
which didn't have meteors slamming the earth.
>
>SERIOUS chilling comment: The famed astrophysicist, Hoyle, once made a
>prediction regarding a possible future that the world's leaders need to
>address more urgently now than ever before (though folks like Ross will
>probably find a way to put a "designer's smile" on this too, should things
>turn out this way):
>
>"It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of
>it here on Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the
>sense of developing high intelligence this is not correct. We have, or
>soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as
>this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic
>ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from
>primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair.
>If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is
>concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of
>them there will be one chance, and one chance only. (Hoyle, 1964; emphasis
>added)
>For the complete article see
>http://www.dieoff.com/page125.htm
I agree with Hoyle, with one exception. After 40 million years, much of our
damage will healed. We have used up the best of the reachable banded iron
formations for iron ore, but there is much ore that is too deep to mine.
When erosion brings it to the surface, we can mine it again (or rather the
next species could mine it again). Same with coal. Oil can regenerate
Received on Tue Oct 5 06:48:59 2004
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