I think humans might be staggeringly important in the scheme of things. We have evolved to this almost unimaginable point that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. We have these Cadillac brains, which are laughably superior to other animals and seem unnecessary to prolong our survival as a species. The level of intelligence is not the equivalent of bringing a gun to a knife fight, we’re bringing preverbial submachine guns and nuclear weapons. On top of that, we have been blessed with hands (they’re pretty cool, you know) and sweat glands (arguably making us the best athletes on the planet). We will never have to worry about another animal threatening our dominance on this planet. It seems pretty darn lucky that we have evolved so far past what is needed to prolong the survival of our species.
Especially the smart thing. If a dog has an IQ of 30 and a chimp has an IQ of 50, what could possibly have caused us to evolve all the way up to 150? The answer is inter-species competition I suppose, but it’s still utterly remarkable . You, gentle reader, have hit the cosmic powerball.
And that wasn’t the only powerball you hit. You also were born after the discovery of oil, but before we used it all up. This brings me to the point of my post, so bear with me as I head in that direction …
The Big Bang produced an unimaginable amount of (basically) hydrogen, a little helium, and some forces like gravity. Gravity caused stuff to group together, and at some point the enormous pressure ignites a fusion reaction and other elements are made for the first time. Your group of stuff is now a star. Right up to that point it was an asteroid (or whatever). Nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, einsteinium, it ALL comes from stars. You are literally and truly, star dust.
So it’s pretty cool that stars automatically make all the stuff that causes the Universe to be an interesting place. It’s also nice that the byproduct of the fusion reaction that creates the elements is basically what we would call energy (sunlight).
All energy (except maybe heat from the interior of the earth) that we have to work with comes from the sun. All food (the ability for anything to grow) comes from the sun. You simply SHADE the sun (hi dinosaurs) and you’re in big, big trouble. It’s everything to us.
About a hundred years ago, humans realized that the power of the sun is stored in the earth as well. We call it oil. Oil is the remnants of plants from the last BILLION or so years, conveniently stored in the earth, waiting for a species smart enough to come along and realize that this stuff is energy. And although we’ve known about oil for a couple thousand years, we did not really “get it” until recently. The first oil well (Edwin Drake) was drilled in Pennsylvania in the 1850s and the oil was used for medicine.
But in the early 1900s, when the population of the planet was one billion, we finally realized what this magical stuff really is. And starting at that moment, with the help of this seemingly unlimited energy, the population of the planet has increased seven-fold up to 6.8 billion in the blink of an eye.
We now have cars, lights, refrigeration, air conditioning, plastics, etc. because of oil. It allowed for the creation and expansion of all the industry and inventions that we take for granted. Modern medicine, computers, you name it. This paragraph could easily turn into an encyclopedia.
And progress continues to accelerate. Is it so far-fetched that by the end of the century we achieve the ideals of science fiction? Something that feels like immortality in some form? Traveling around the solar system? I don’t think when you compare 2010 with 1910 that these ideas sound all that crazy for 2110.
But back to oil. One way or another, we’re running out of the stuff. Maybe the peak-oil crowd has some self-interested motives. Undoubtedly, some of them do. But oil is obviously finite; it’s just a matter of when we run out. Here’s the idea:
Some scientists believe that there is absolutely nothing short of a radical nuclear technology (miniature suns on earth, hopefully a little closer to room temperature) that can replace the once-in-a-planet’s life discovery of the storage of a billion years of sunlight. Not traditional solar, not wind, not waves, not geothermal.
On the other hand, some scientists think it’s just a matter of time until solar or some other technology gets good enough that we have what we need. I don’t know which one is right, but tend to drift a little more toward the peak oil crowd and that the end of the good times are coming and we need something truly radical to get us what we need.
A little more on the importance of oil. Energy and economy goes hand in hand. The USA is 25% of the world’s economy (by GDP). We also use about 25% of the energy. This relationship is no coincidence and is roughly true everywhere, especially when adjusting for the number of people in an area (denser = less energy use). This means if I take away some of your energy, your economy will suffer. Period. This is evident in the fact that the last several recessions were all arguably triggered by rising oil prices.
This is perhaps my favorite related article. “[the idea of rising oil prices plunging us into recession] is all rattling good fun, but most of it is utter piffle.” Written in early 2008. Whoops. I guess I have to them credit for not taking down the post.
On a slightly more sobering note, if it comes to it, the decline of easily available energy is almost unimaginable. We now have seven billion people suckling on the tit of oil that we treat like a never-ending smorgasboard. It’s like the family that finds a chest of money, signs up for a $5,000/month mortgage and has 10 kids. Then one day ma says to pa, “Hey, did you know there’s a bottom to this chest? I just took some money out and can see the bottom.” Pa says “Huh. I hadn’t really thought about that before.”
You think the current yawning FISCAL deficits are bad? Think about the energy deficits. We’ve got a X megajoule (whatever) monthly bill that we’re paying with oil to keep the world running … will we see the bottom of the chest one of these days?
So, I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that we’re in a race to solve our problems before the oil runs out. I think that we’re probably smart enough to start moving away from oil in some way and maybe we have 300 years instead of 100. But it really doesn’t matter. We have to get this totally worked out before the problems start in earnest. In other words, we’ve got to start using the available energy to “fund” ways to replicate it. We’ve got to take money from the chest and invest it in some other “business” instead of just being fat, dumb, and happy. Otherwise, human energy consumption, and along with it any semblance of prosperity, will look like this, and I really don’t want to be around when we slide down the back of the true mother of all bubbles:
And in my last bit of groundwork (I’ve saved the real crazy to the end) I want to ask where the aliens are. Have you ever seen life not expand into the available space the moment it could? I know the mold in my shower works that way. In 100,000 years of humans, we discover America in the 1700s and it’s full 300 years (.3% of the time) later? Won’t enterprising folks colonize the moon and Mars the minute we’re able?
So where are the alien energy beams sent to other planets that create machines from the materials there? Are wormholes and faster-than-light travel really not possible? Haven’t the aliens freed themselves from needs of a body yet to travel as energy? If they had, would they have expanded everywhere? Don’t forget, they’ve had several BILLION years to try. One could see our technology eventually getting to some of those things, but if none of that exists out there, isn’t it possible that we are the smartest beings around, the only freaks of evolution that have gotten this far? So doesn’t that make our cosmic importance really, really significant?
I think it’s possible that we are close to accomplishing some things that the Universe would notice, but the clock is ticking. Very soon, this little game will be over.
So, is it possible this is the most important hundred years in the history of the Universe? It’s possible. I think that’s pretty interesting.
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