"We are coming to a point in our history in which we need to start looking for more space," Han Admiraal, a civil engineer with over two decades of experience in underground space, told AFP on the sidelines of this year's World Tunnel Congress.
...
"Underground spaces could easily be used for growing crops," he said, as he toured the cavernous Bourbon Tunnel, dug deep under the Italian city of Naples as a potential escape route for King Ferdinand II of Bourbon after the 1848 riots.Scientific developments in areas like aquaponics—where vegetables and fish are farmed together—could help relieve the pressure on the food supply chain, and dramatically cut transport costs if such new farms were situated under cities.
Isn't excavation expensive?
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What if the Only Way is Down? Subterranean Survival Opportunity
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(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @01:05AM (18 children)
not betatesting profit generating escape tech for the 1%
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @01:11AM (10 children)
It's the 99% who are causing the overcrowding and excessive resource usage. Sterilize them and the world will be a better place in one generation.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 10 2019, @01:14AM (5 children)
When you sterilize the 99%, who are going to serve the 1%'s children?
Maybe after the robot revolution comes they'll make that play, but until then somebody has to grow the food, cook the food, take out the garbage, tend the mansion, crew the yacht, etc.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JNCF on Friday May 10 2019, @01:52AM (4 children)
Related question: after the 0.1% kill the rest of us in The Great Drone Purge of 2021 how many generations will it take before the wealth distribution comes back around to the current status quo?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @07:01AM (2 children)
This cycle repeats about every 14k years.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 10 2019, @01:19PM
That's a fantasy story... in real life it happens much faster.
So say we all.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday May 10 2019, @01:41PM
Yes. We're at the C.H.U.D. [wikipedia.org] phase.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 10 2019, @01:15PM
Remember the wise old owl from the Tootsie Pop commercial?
Three.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Bot on Friday May 10 2019, @08:26AM (2 children)
>It's the 99% who are causing the overcrowding and excessive resource usage.
Before this particular 1% took over, industrial revolution, political revolution, financial revolution, there was no overcrowding nor excessive resource usage. Demographic problems were dealt with building an army and clashing it against other armies. Each with well colored and distinguishable outfits, so that even in the dust and the blood you would be able to tell friend from enemy. If you behaved like the 'freedom fighters' of today, killing civilians and pretending to be civilian, or the tech giant bombing civilians from afar, you would have been judged lower than vermin. Incidentally like the usury guys.
Anyway, as usual, those who thinks overcrowding is a problem are invited to shut themselves down permanently and let the rest decide if it's still a problem.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by janrinok on Friday May 10 2019, @09:24AM (1 child)
Not quite true. One of the conditions that allowed the plague to spread so quickly and virulently, and the great fire of London to be so devastating, was the over-crowding in major cities in the UK. However, the majority of people lived in smaller towns, villages and hamlets but still in comparatively small homes that were overcrowded, often being the home of several generations of a family at the same time.
It is true that the industrial revolution exacerbated the situation, certainly in the UK, by encouraging people to move to towns and cities to support the various new industries that were evolving. Even today it is possible in NW England to plot the route of major rivers by looking at the towns that grew along the rivers in order to support the cotton mills that needed both the water and the power it could generate. Similar phenomena are seen for the steel industry et al.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday May 11 2019, @09:11PM
I'd say that your definition of overcrowding facilitates population decline, so I dunno whether you have a point or you lose one.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 10 2019, @01:54PM
Starvation in one generation if the Morlocks sterilize the Eloi.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @01:25AM
You go hug a tree, while the 1% prep their slice of the crust.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday May 10 2019, @03:41AM (5 children)
It's an Elite thing. But, also an "everybody" thing. I'm a builder, I know. Our Country, unfortunately, is full. And we've been building up -- skyscraper. Or, High Rise. We've been building out. Known as, suburb. And Canada, the 2nd. biggest country, is becoming, very quickly, our suburb. Robert Moses, great friend of my Father, wasn't a big fan of the tunnel. But, when crooked FDR forced him to do one, it was magnificent -- Queens Midtown Tunnel. I'll tell you, our MTA wanted to change the tiles in that one after Hurricane Sandy. And, they wanted going with white. Great color. But Cuomo told them, put in blue & gold stripes. Along with the white. Wasting $30 million. Unbelieveable and so many folks can't tell what the colors are anyway. Remember the Internet Dress? White, gold, blue, black, nobody really knew. And frankly, most of the people going through the Queens Midtown aren't looking at the walls. They're looking at the beautiful woman, or man they're with. At the women, if they're lucky. Or if they're not so lucky, possibly they have their eyes closed the entire time. Something I've never had to do. But a lot of guys have.
Elon Musk, I wouldn't say is the 1%. I'd say he's the 0.001%. And he's moving very strongly on, the NY-DC Tunnel. Going from New York City to Washington. A route that, at one time was very big for my airline. Trump Shuttle, so proud of that one and that's one that I think may come back again in another form. And whatever needs signing to get the tunnel going, I'll sign. Just bring me the papers and I'll sign. New York -- people don't know this -- was once the capital of our Country. When our Country was great. I'm a New Yorker, I came to Washington. I'm doing tremendous things. As everyone knows. And with Elon's incredible tunnel I think we'll see more and more New York people coming to Washington. MAGA!!
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday May 10 2019, @08:30AM (2 children)
> I'm a builder
A cursory look at the way world leaders hug, kiss, and shake hands when they meet indicates most of you are indeed masons.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday May 10 2019, @11:03AM (1 child)
I am a freemason. I have never seen world leaders shaking hands or hugging (which would only be done in one case for somebody who has been raised to Master Mason, and in one other for a Master Mason who is made the Worshipful Master of a lodge, but those would never be done in public) in a masonic fashion.
There is a sprinkling of masons who are world leaders, but they're in smaller countries in Africa and South America.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @01:56PM
Well, I'm not sure that's what you wanted to say … sounds like the perfect material for conspiracy theorists.
I guess you were just referring to the leaders of those smaller countries.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday May 10 2019, @09:14AM (1 child)
Our Country, unfortunately, is full
Only full of trump's ego.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @01:06PM
feed him broccoli, maybe he can be gassy and vent out the toxins, as well as fix some of those mental instabilities!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 10 2019, @01:11AM (6 children)
With free energy, excavation is easy in rock and if you've got sand, just fuse it into rock with heat.
Turn the top kilometer of the Earth's crust into a foam of caverns, 3 dimensional cities with inverted towers - protected from weather and rogue airliners... grow food down there, low rent housing, warehouses, etc. You can put all the lighting down there you want/need, control the temperature and humidity - if we get really good at material science we can even reject waste heat into the core, helping to keep the mantle fluid.
Without free energy, we're pretty screwed. Even with free energy, the population growth of the last 100 years can't continue for the next 1000, there's just not enough volume in this rock to house that many human bodies.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JNCF on Friday May 10 2019, @01:55AM
If we were willing to get our hands dirty with uranium and chalk up a Chernobyl every once in a while to learning experience power wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday May 10 2019, @01:58AM (1 child)
With free energy and the capacity to direct it in large amounts over distance we are screwed in the first 5 minutes.
Tool, weapon... the distinction is only who is the unlucky who stands at the receiving end.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 10 2019, @01:21PM
Sure, we've had the H bomb for ~70 years now, what we need is that amount of power harnessed into a distribution system like the electric grid, and no harmful pollution or waste byproducts.
Fusion power - 20 years away for the last 60.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @02:52AM
Magrathea?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday May 10 2019, @04:32AM (1 child)
I think that you would find that under your scenario heat would start to be a problem.
OTOH, if there's enough energy available, then space habitats could be just as large, or larger, than those underground cities, an could provide a wealth of different options that wouldn't be available underground, from slow trips to distant stars to topopolis. You might need to be a bit out from the sun, but with enough energy that ceases to be a problem. And excess heat can easily be radiated.
For that matter, if energy ceased being expensive, building in space might be a lot cheaper. You wouldn't need to pay someone else for the real estate.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Friday May 10 2019, @08:31AM
You wish!
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by optotronic on Friday May 10 2019, @01:32AM (20 children)
I don't see any benefit from efforts to fit more people on this planet. We're already overusing/abusing its resources.
Better to direct efforts to reduce fertility rates or to colonize other planets.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Friday May 10 2019, @01:45AM (15 children)
Sterilization for lifetime universal basic income trade in 3... 2... 1...
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday May 10 2019, @02:03AM (4 children)
Where do I sign? (you sucker)
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JNCF on Friday May 10 2019, @04:14AM (3 children)
Without further stipulations the actual winning strategy in this scenario is quite dark: have way too many kids, raise them with "take care of your elders" values, encourage roughly half of them (mostly the males) to get sterilized, and encourage all of them to send a cut of the basic income packages they receive/get-cuts-of up the pyramid scheme. Repeat. Expect religious sects to pop up around this model overnight.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday May 10 2019, @05:31AM
In the context of my reply, wasn't thinking about the society in general, only to my specific case.
I'll let others have their choices.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 10 2019, @02:06PM (1 child)
This religious pyramid scheme has the same problem as all such schemes. It can only get so many levels deep and it involves more than the world's population.
If such a scheme gets started, then doesn't it actually further the goals of the UBI-for-sterilization program? In a few generations population would shrink.
You said without further stipulations. Here is a stipulation: you can only participate in UBI-for-sterilization if you've had no more than two or fewer offspring. Each of the up to two offspring decreases the UBI package you are offered. So getting sterilized before reproduction is the maximum benefit you can receive.
Other stipulation could be that if you and your parent is on UBI, you cannot provide any financial support to your ancestors. The whole point is that your UBI can support you, and perhaps a small family in exchange for you not procreating. Craft the policy that way.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Friday May 10 2019, @02:43PM
I don't see why it should stop working until the government goes cuts off the incentive. As long as the incentive exists, the population can keep growing by spending it on food/housing/etc.
I'm honestly missing the logic here. Are you assuming that these people will all be people who would otherwise still be in a reproduce-too-much religious sect? If so, I'm not convinced of that.
Oddly, despite explicitly saying that I assumed mo further stipulations, I actually did implicitly assume the further stipulation that anybody who already has children is not eligible. Thus, I think my proposed religious sect would survive your addendum. The founder never gets paid directly by the government, half of their children do. And so on for the fertile members of the next generation.
This is the sort of stipulation that would mangle but not break the scheme. It prevents the pyramidal structure from forming, but still allows for half of a sibling cohort to get sterilised and support the other half generation after generation. Another stipulation to consider (were we to go down this path) is having payouts be in part based on family structure as you proposed before, but considering sibling count; package benefits scale down exponentially as siblings scale linearly.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday May 10 2019, @02:25AM (5 children)
Fine by me. I'm gayer than Ellen and Portia on a rainbow biplane and my girlfriend doesn't want children anyway. Snip it! Snip it good.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 10 2019, @02:28AM (4 children)
I'm not knocking it. But it will cause a political firestorm of epic proportions if ever proposed.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday May 10 2019, @11:08AM (2 children)
I'm starting to have my doubts about political firestorms. They've got everybody turned upside down talking about transgender rights, a vanishingly small percentage of the population, and half convinced to eat insects. If forcing people to eat bugs doesn't trigger a firestorm it's not clear sterilization will.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 10 2019, @02:34PM (1 child)
People are apparently getting banned on Twitter for misgendering others (when pronouns are listed in someone's user profile), but I haven't noticed a groundswell of support/activity encouraging eating insects. Maybe a few futurists and news outlets like to talk about it, but millions of Americans aren't thinking about eating insects and are probably unaware of the "benefits".
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday May 10 2019, @04:28PM
Banned for using the wrong pronouns? That is weak.
I'm sure millions of Americans aren't talking about the "benefits" of gender fluidity either, but here we are.
This feels like a moment in which psychohistory will be founded as a discipline. Everything is going off the rails so quickly it should be modeled mathematically.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 10 2019, @02:10PM
Some people will be outraged. Others will be supportive.
Another idea for this policy. The taxes to support the UBI for sterilized people are paid by non sterilized people. But it can't be phrased that way. Instead call it, a tax credit for the sterilized people receiving UBI. That further encourages participation in the UBI for sterilization program.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @07:08AM (1 child)
right, because we can always trust the government's promises.
have a look at pensions received by Detroit cops.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 10 2019, @07:13AM
Just sue the government for replacement parts.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Bot on Friday May 10 2019, @08:33AM (1 child)
You counted in a funny way.
It's sterilization for everybody but the very careful in 2... 3... 4.... 5G
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 10 2019, @08:57AM
... 5GE... 5G... and even 6G ASAP...
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @01:55AM (2 children)
No you are wrong, we need all the extra brains we can get if we’re hoping to solve the planet’s problems!
So yes put them underground
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-14/want-to-help-fight-climate-change-have-more-children [bloomberg.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @02:21AM (1 child)
I just lost 50 IQ points by reading that article. Fuck, some people are incomprehensibly stupid.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Friday May 10 2019, @11:09AM
N00b.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday May 10 2019, @04:38AM
That's not an either/or, that's rather a both/and. The population of space habitats, whether in space on on planetary surfaces, will need to be rigidly controlled until the ecology gets the size of at least Australia, and which point the control could loosen a bit. But you don't want to consume too much oxygen, and you don't want to emit too little carbon dioxide, etc. With larger numbers you can depend more on average consumption/emission.
And Earth's resources are being overused. The population on Earth needs to decrease. Fortunately TVs, video games, social networking, etc. are already acting to decrease the population, but perhaps not quickly enough.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by J053 on Friday May 10 2019, @01:32AM (21 children)
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 10 2019, @01:44AM (19 children)
Burrowing underground preserves more of the surface. Of course, you are still affecting a biosphere, but we don't care about it as much.
We should also be building up (arcologies) and maybe try seasteading, although the engineering challenges related to saltwater may be too much of a pain.
That said, it is probably wrong to say that the Earth can't support many more billions of people, when it can be done simply by expanding into some of those sparsely populated places you mentioned. There is more than enough food production to feed the entire planet and then some, agriculture will become more efficient, and there are steps we could take to cut food waste.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by optotronic on Friday May 10 2019, @02:14AM (7 children)
For some definition of "support". Maybe if you're willing to live with a dwindling number of non-human species and accept the health consequences of consuming microplastics. And if you're willing to live through possibly nasty food and water shortages as the climate shifts.
(Score: 3, Funny) by JNCF on Friday May 10 2019, @02:29AM
Dwindling number of species, yes. Nasty food/water/air, probably not. If we're still living in meat-bodies we'll just filter it all and live inside. That's kind of dystopian from our current point of view, but I think it's where we're headed, and when the future people look back at videos of The Old Nature they'll consider it ugly by comparison to their new surrounding which have been generated by genetic algorithms using human standards of beauty measured from EEG headsets as their fitness functions. Yes, I know I could well be wrong in this prediction.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday May 10 2019, @03:00AM (5 children)
That's why I would prefer to see cities become extremely dense, to include towering arcologies or maybe TFA's underground structures that could allow 50 million people to fit into where 10 million people used to be, with stuff optimized for walking distance so that cars aren't needed, and possibly vertical farming, aquaponics, etc. within the city. Basically, you can make things more efficient and curb the outward spread.
If that doesn't happen, you'll just naturally see people bulldozing forests to build more homes, living in formerly sparsely populated areas, widening cities and suburbs, etc. You'll naturally see it, because I don't hear any great ideas that are going to stop unwanted population growth, although birth rates are naturally declining all over the world. But even if population levels off at 10-12 billion, we will see U.S. population hit 400 million, and maybe 500-600 million. Meaning a lot of environmental destruction to support that inevitable growth.
I'm not sure why I would be worried about this when people are voluntarily consuming microplastics by choosing to use stuff like sea salt. I did submit the infinitely recyclable plastic story [soylentnews.org] earlier.
Do we have a choice in the matter? Unlikely at this rate. But we could see places like Canada and Russia, which have large amounts of cold, unpopulated land, becoming agricultural powerhouses.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by qzm on Friday May 10 2019, @04:25AM (4 children)
That would be because you are a moron sucking the teat of socialists populism.
Perhaps have a look at how high density housing works out.
Have a look at the psychological research on it.
It is a complete disaster.
The fact is there is huge free space.. most of the crowding is caused by artificial scarcity of where we are allowed to build.
City dwellers on the whole are the cause of pollution and environmental problems.. Not the solution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @05:07AM
Most of the crowding is caused because populations keep growing, and people like to go where the action is, not out to the boonies.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 10 2019, @05:25AM (2 children)
Here, get yourself a cheap education:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth#Population_projections_of_the_101_largest_cities_in_the_21st_century [wikipedia.org]
People are already congregating into metropolitan areas en masse and will continue to do so. City planning will influence the quality of the outcome.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Friday May 10 2019, @08:41AM (1 child)
I dunno elsewhere but here many people would gladly return to a piece of land as they are tired of getting their brain and respiratory system fogged with the city air. But it's unfeasible economically because you need to turn product into money to pay taxes.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday May 10 2019, @11:17AM
J053 is not wrong. There are vast, vast swathes of the Earth that are empty. They could carry many more people, and probably will before most of us have passed from this life, actually.
The trouble is supplying the material needs of those unborn billions. Capitalism, as currently constituted, can't do it. The "pillage the earth, exploit huge masses of poor to do the work, give it all to a lazy entitled handful" is unsustainable. A model that watched the triple bottom line of profit-social-environmental might have a chance.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday May 10 2019, @02:51AM (3 children)
Shame alot of Australia can't support humans very well [quora.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 10 2019, @03:09AM (2 children)
Consider massive engineering projects to channel seawater inland, then desalination. Or something along those lines:
Large Wind and Solar Farms in the Sahara Would Increase Heat, Rain, Vegetation [soylentnews.org]
Y Combinator Unveils Another Climate Change "Moonshot": Flood a Desert [soylentnews.org]
The coast is always going to be a better option because you have all the water you'll ever need right there. And instead of seasteading, you could pull a Dubai and build artificial islands.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Friday May 10 2019, @03:40AM (1 child)
The distinction between an oil platform and an artificial island is murky. Materials used? Density of base? Same for an island and a continent. To me, the thing that makes seasteading seasteading is that we are moving into a space which has been ocean in human history (and may still be, depending on the specific proposal). It's labels all the way down, of course.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday May 10 2019, @09:10AM
Austrailia has a lot of uninhabitted coast and desert. That gives place for cities like Dubai (no need for artifical islands), and place for solar power to power it.
If Austrailia hadn't spent the last few decades selling it's resources at pennies on the dollar to China it would be very well placed.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday May 10 2019, @04:49AM (6 children)
I think you are overly optimistic. The resources required by the giant cities you are proposing are not trivial, and not known to be available. Food may be doable, but other components are less likely. Have you tracked the price of Copper recently? Indium? (Well, it's been a few years since I did. It was too depressing.)
The only way I can conceive your giant cities surviving is if sea-water mining for uranium (known to be slightly profitable) made, as a side effect, a rich ore for other needed materials. But most materials are too expensive to extract from sea water. Or possibly as a side effect of controlled fusion we could create a torch to vaporize rock and run the vapors through a mass spectrometer. Whee!! (I'm going to just skip over all the problems inherent in THAT scenario.)
Not to mention that we already seem to be killing off the plankton, which make about 2/3 of our atmosphere's oxygen. And the forests that make another large fraction. So expect the oxygen level of the planet to take a sharp dip fairly soon.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 10 2019, @05:20AM (3 children)
Energy wise: solar panels, thorium fission, and fusion. Use situational resources where applicable, like geothermal.
Maybe in a few decades we'll have a credible attempt to do asteroid mining, including getting resources to the Earth's surface [soylentnews.org].
We need to apply that to landfills.
That will probably balance out. Or we're just screwed.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday May 10 2019, @04:32PM (2 children)
Asteroid mining will be, at best, marginal economically until we have permanent residence in space. I suppose it could be run by a good enough AI, though.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 10 2019, @06:36PM (1 child)
Asteroid mining would be best for making things in situ. But there are seemingly credible proposals for bringing asteroids down to the surface of Earth. I think it boils down to getting the asteroid to orbit Earth, wrapping the asteroid in a heat shield, and then sending it down to hit a desert. Most of the velocity will be lost without the mass being burned off, and it will be far too slow to cause a catastrophic megaton explosion.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday May 10 2019, @09:29PM
So that is what happened 65 million years ago! :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday May 10 2019, @07:58AM (1 child)
So expect the oxygen level of the planet to take a sharp dip fairly soon.
That's OK, we'll just build megamaid
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @02:06PM
We first have to find Druidia.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Friday May 10 2019, @02:12PM
Yes, let's use the space we have above ground - - - for solar and wind.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 10 2019, @03:33AM (2 children)
Do you want Morlocks? Because this is how you get Morlocks.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 10 2019, @03:37AM
Damn, forgot to make the Morlocks comment.
Morlocks did nothing wrong.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by pipedwho on Friday May 10 2019, @05:10AM
You say that like it's a bad thing.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Friday May 10 2019, @07:34AM (4 children)
Down is stupid.
What you do, at worst, is dig down, while using the spoil to build up. The spoil you take out of a huge solid hole would make a GIANT hollow tower you could live in with walls several feet thick. It's stupid and unnecessarily expensive to just keep going down.
But "indoors" is the problem - no sunlight causes all kinds of problems and whether you're in a tower or a cave, that's an issue that requires lots of power to compensate (way more, for instance, than you could get by a bunch of solar panels covering wherever you're living - solar panels would need to be pretty much 100% efficient for that to work and you be able to grow enough crops via artificial light.
Down has all kinds of problems. Light. Power. Water sourcing (especially if you're going to fish!). Water drainage. Air circulation. Heat/Cooling. (We use caves to keep cheese cool because they do it naturally. But also we have severe problems in mines where heat is a major issue. Fixing those takes... even more power).
And as you start to get into the whole "grow all our own crops underground", you're into something ludicrously more expensive than just using the vast swathes of unused land with fertile soil and a natural light source that cover the planet. Sure, it might help in a city, but it makes much more sense to just import food from outside than it does to try to grow it under Naples.
If the tunnels exist, sure that's a lot of work done, but likely they *won't* exist in a shape/format that is good for growing acres of crops with light sources above and ventilation around and holding huge fish farms.
It's a silly idea. And where viable we already use caves for things like this - everything from seed preservation to maturing cheese (especially in Italy... it's very common to use the older methods for traditional cheese manufacture).
But *making* space underground to do things poorly compared to above-ground? That's just nonsense. You'd only want to do that for a) practice, b) space travel, c) extremely serious environmental disaster.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday May 10 2019, @09:03AM (3 children)
LED lights safer, more effective in producing Vitamin D3 than sunlight [sciencedaily.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @11:40AM
wow. I had no idea. thanks for the link.
(I still think the GP is right in saying that overground is better for living than underground).
(Score: 2) by ledow on Friday May 10 2019, @03:44PM (1 child)
Yes, and?
"The UV LED device also emits a much narrower band of UVB light and thereby decreasing likelihood of skin damage that can occur when the skin is exposed to higher wavelengths of UV radiation."
Plants don't only need a narrow band of UVB.
And there is zero information there about HOW efficient it is - it's might be more efficient than sunlight, but sunlight is free, thereby almost infinitely efficient. Whether running 12V into a large-wattage LED sufficient to replicate the UV (and other visible light) radiation given out by the sun and necessary for crop growing is actually viable is another matter entirely. You might well lose 50% of the energy before you start, and require an enormous amount of energy after that to transform seedlings into wheat crops sufficient to feed a city (or whatever).
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday May 12 2019, @06:57PM
It was a lazy reply, I didn't realize it was all about plants.
Cheap nuclear fusion electricity could help make growing plants underground or vertically more viable.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by chewbacon on Friday May 10 2019, @01:13PM
So there's an caldera out there with an overdue eruption that will send ash into the sky and could wipe out much of, if not nearly all, life on earth as it disrupts the food chain when plants die from lack of sunlight. This is worth looking into further for survival after a doomsday scenario. And overpopulation. Can't wait to see the seismic disturbances we stir up with this.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Friday May 10 2019, @02:14PM
They can detect the heat blooms from these underground crops and then raid the underground facility.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by deimtee on Friday May 10 2019, @03:03PM (2 children)
Breaking news, crowded cities are crowded. If you don't like it move out of the city.
Fun exercise. Go to google maps. Zoom out until the whole of your country is a small area in the middle of the screen. Move it around a bit to randomly put the middle of the screen somewhere inside the borders. Switch to satellite mode. Hit the zoom-in button until the scale in the corner says 50 meters (or 50 yards). 99% chance you can only see either farmland or wilderness. 1% chance you hit an urban/city area.
Or, while zoomed out that far, pick up the streetview man in the corner and drop him randomly. You are going to hit somewhere people have been, and it is still mostly empty.
200 million years is actually quite a long time.
(Score: 2) by DutchUncle on Friday May 10 2019, @07:50PM (1 child)
Even some of the populated urban/city areas are only marginally livable (or were considered so before the advent of air conditioning). There's an awful lot of open flat land in the Central Time Zone.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday May 11 2019, @03:08AM
My point was that there is no need to dig expensive holes. There is plenty of space above ground. Buildings where people live and work are a very small percentage of land use. Most human impact on the environment is farming. Putting up greenhouses and growing more per acre would free up more space and be much cheaper than digging giant caverns.
The whole notion of We are running out of space and need to dig holes to live in is due to living in the middle of a city where land is expensive. It may be economically possible in the city, but I think it is likely cheaper just to build upwards. Either way you have to support any level above the basement. Putting a skyscraper in a hole doesn't make the skyscraper cheaper, it just adds the cost of digging a hole.
200 million years is actually quite a long time.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Friday May 10 2019, @06:04PM
There is a truly astounding amount of surface space that would be used for growing crops before subterranean farming made financial sense. It doesn't begin to make economic sense unless you can cut the excavation costs by many orders of magnitude. Today it would make more sense to build a parking garage and farm in that than to build the equivalent structure underground.
I say this understanding that subterranean farming would be a boon to my personal pet project of colonizing Mars.
(Score: 2) by DutchUncle on Friday May 10 2019, @07:44PM
And there's already a Boring Company.