Poll
Question:
Will there be…
Option 1: …more beer?
votes: 6
Option 2: …less beer?
votes: 0
How do we imagine the world in 2030 to be?
I voted more beer. In 2030 there will be less clean water, probably critically little, and whatever liquid piss exists will be labelled attractively, such as "beer", and sold expensively.
Ersi, meet Cheech (https://vivaldi.net/forum/debates/204-the-world-in-2030#1984). (Hmm, message 1984).
Ersi has the same name both here and there https://vivaldi.net/community/profile/443 Logic is universal :)
I voted more beer. In 2030 there will be less clean water, probably critically little, and whatever liquid piss exists will be labelled attractively, such as "beer", and sold expensively.
I'm not sure I agree. Even China is starting to take steps to clean up its pollution or at least reduce it, and our (European) rivers are the cleanest they've been in over a century. Heck, you can probably drink the water in Amsterdam's canals today with no more than a little boiling (just to be sure), which was hardly the case 400 years ago.
I do agree that there will probably be more "beer", but that aside.
I don't know if there will be any world by 2030.
@Frenzie
You must be heavily a city person. You think when the worst stench and dirt from the cities is reducing, that the world is doing okay? Were you around 400 years ago to measure the pollution of the time? How far beyond the cities did it reach at the time?
I was born and grew up deep in the countryside. I have had little phases here and there, but basically I live at the same spot where I was born. The forests have been drastically reduced here in the past 20 years.
The urban effects on the countryside are global now. Maybe I am expressing myself too crudely, but I haven't seen any reliable measures of reduced pollution in the world. It's only increasing. Oil, plastics, and other poisons are not being given up - quite to the contrary. At the same time, there's a trend to present this or that pretty spot or project as "the way of the future", but it should be evident that those are just PR and marketing. All pretty spots in the world are monetised for tourism - and thus polluted.
From the Grand Canyon.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fmanta.fm.arizona.edu%2Fcanyon%2Fsp2012%2Fimages%2F6.jpg&hash=9ef9920039af32b8d72761b408529745" rel="cached" data-hash="9ef9920039af32b8d72761b408529745" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://manta.fm.arizona.edu/canyon/sp2012/images/6.jpg)
You must be heavily a city person. You think when the worst stench and dirt from the cities is reducing, that the world is doing okay?
Far from it. We might well be fucked if we (or perhaps more to the point, the Americans and the Chinese) don't change things around significantly. That's an entirely different question.
I was born and grew up deep in the countryside. I have had little phases here and there, but basically I live at the same spot where I was born. The forests have been drastically reduced here in the past 20 years.
So did I. The forests there have drastically increased over the past century, and I'm not talking production forests. Of course, that's not a global or even national phenomenon.
The urban effects on the countryside are global now. Maybe I am expressing myself too crudely, but I haven't seen any reliable measures of reduced pollution in the world. It's only increasing. Oil, plastics, and other poisons are not being given up - quite to the contrary. At the same time, there's a trend to present this or that pretty spot or project as "the way of the future", but it should be evident that those are just PR and marketing. All pretty spots in the world are monetised for tourism - and thus polluted.
The Pacific has been largely fished empty by industrial fishing boats. Jellyfish are overtaking the seas, and the amount of trash out there is humongous. Still a different question.
I am not too concerned about local pollution and even deforestation (obviously these are very important concerns, but these problems have also been solved; having been solved doesn't mean will be solved, though, vigilance is required), but am more concerned global industrial fishing. This is basically hunting/gathering, an activity that is hard to do sustainably.
You must be heavily a city person. You think when the worst stench and dirt from the cities is reducing, that the world is doing okay?
Far from it. We might well be fucked if we (or perhaps more to the point, the Americans and the Chinese) don't change things around significantly. That's an entirely different question.
Different from what? If you imply that when the biggies of the world (United States, China, EU, Japan, and India) become radically ecological all of a sudden, then nature might be saved, I agree. And to me this is exactly the question of ecological future for me. Without this turn, there will be no hope. The critical point has been reached and small steps towards the deceleration of destruction will be too small.
I was born and grew up deep in the countryside. I have had little phases here and there, but basically I live at the same spot where I was born. The forests have been drastically reduced here in the past 20 years.
So did I. The forests there have drastically increased over the past century, and I'm not talking production forests. Of course, that's not a global or even national phenomenon.
So, regrowth of forests at your place is not a national phenomenon. Deforestation over here is a wider regional phenomenon. In the Soviet era, forests covered reportedly 70% of Estonia's surface. Now it's reportedly 45%. The reports may be beautified, which makes the situation worse. Finns and Swedes have pretty much depleted their own forests for paper production and gone to ravage Northern Russia. In Russia the nature reserves have not been set up yet to the extent they have in the Nordic countries. I have no reason to believe that Canada's forests are doing much better.
The Pacific has been largely fished empty by industrial fishing boats. Jellyfish are overtaking the seas, and the amount of trash out there is humongous. Still a different question.
Different from what? From pollution? From depletion of resources? Looks like the same unresolved/unresolvable ecological concerns to me.
I am not too concerned about local pollution and even deforestation (obviously these are very important concerns, but these problems have also been solved; having been solved doesn't mean will be solved, though, vigilance is required), but am more concerned global industrial fishing. This is basically hunting/gathering, an activity that is hard to do sustainably.
That is my position too. Most or perhaps even all such problems have already been solved or will be soon. The rest is politics. I hope we won't enter the kind of ecological disaster that destroyed the Roman Empire, because that would be rather unpleasant.
Different from what? If you imply that when the biggies of the world (United States, China, EU, Japan, and India) become radically ecological all of a sudden, then nature might be saved, I agree. And to me this is exactly the question of ecological future for me. Without this turn, there will be no hope. The critical point has been reached and small steps towards the deceleration of destruction will be too small.
Different from the question of whether or not there will be critically little clean water. The interconnected problems of water and deforestation are just about the only problems that are getting not only getting attention, but actual results. We've been on it since the 1960s. The other side of the Iron Curtain unfortunately remained stuck there for a few decades, ecologically speaking.
Different from what? From pollution? From depletion of resources? Looks like the same unresolved/unresolvable ecological concerns to me.
We've already reached the point where garbage heaps are probably better mines for many metals than, um, mines.
So, regrowth of forests at your place is not a national phenomenon.
There not being regrowth doesn't necessarily imply the opposite either, mind you. In any case, the regrowth, both regional and national happened over the course of the 20th century and has plateaued nation-wide for obvious reasons.* Here's the numbers:
1750: 50.000 ha. (2%)
1850: 100.000 ha. (3%)
1950: 250.000 ha. (7%)
2002: 360.000 ha. (10,6%)
The near-complete deforestation happened centuries before the industrial revolution.** By that time we were already planting forests en masse, with the intent of cutting them down decades later. And from the late 19th century onward those were largely left alone and allowed to expand naturally.
* Perhaps not obvious if you're not Dutch. In the '90s we hatched the plan to have 15% forest by 2050, but the Balkenende cabinet thought it was more worthwhile to buy the JSF than to keep funding such efforts, and left them to individuals (mostly farmers). Therefore the growth has stagnated.
** Holland is said to etymologically stem from Holt-land. In Dutch, ol → ou. old/alt → oud. gold/Gold > goud. So Holt-land is a former pronunciation, and still an English word, of what would now be called houtland, i.e. woodland. Holland, totally devoid of forests during its Golden Age, was completely covered in forests a very, very long time ago.
Finns and Swedes have pretty much depleted their own forests for paper production and gone to ravage Northern Russia.
That's news for me. I have moved to Sweden, and there is forest as far as the eyes can see, and the saw mills are doing well. Virtually all forest is managed forest, and sustainably so, there is very little virgin forest. There are no "depleted" forests in Sweden, Finland, or Norway.
20-25 years ago the Czech Republic (or Czechoslovakia back in those days) used to have massive dead forests due to pollution, primarily from SO2. Now that forest has recovered. A much more serious deforestation of the Bohemian forests happened about 500 years ago from intense glass production, when the Bohemian forests largely were burnt, that too recovered. On the other hand Iceland is still deforested after the forests being cut down nearly a millennium ago.
We've already reached the point where garbage heaps are probably better mines for many metals than, um, mines.
Common sense says this was so all along. Facts say we recycle less than ever before during history. There's no organised mining of waste. Only the homeless do it, or try to - there are fences to prevent them.
Common sense says this was so all along. Facts say we recycle less than ever before during history. There's no organised mining of waste. Only the homeless do it, or try to - there are fences to prevent them.
Facts say the opposite.
It used to be only poor countries did "urban mining" as a kind of cottage industri, until China scaled it up. Now several of the Chinese billionaires have made their billions on recycling, and on a smaller scale internal migrants have made very good money on recycling. The industry is becoming more professional, large-scale, capital-intensive, specialised, automated, and less damaging to the local environment and health. Recycling is still a dirty, polluting industry, but gradually less so. It is also, especially for metals, energy-intensive.
By 2030 it would be much more automated and large scale, but we are moving into a recycling economy slowly and backwards, even by 2030 we wouldn't really live in an recycling economy,
but as resources become more valuable and the technology more advanced we will.
Common sense says this was so all along.
Even before anything was mined at all? :) But I suppose you mean since mass production and planned obsolescence really got started.
mass production and planned obsolescence
Two components of consumerism. The third one being psychological manipulation and the fourth one the financial trap.
People don't need any of that for having a fulfilling life.
Returning on forests, a forest is a complex eco-system that can't be recreated once destroyed. What people call "reforestation" it's just planting a vast area of mono-culture that generates ecological disasters, not sustainable eco-systems.
Additionally, such reforestation is been presented as a solution while in fact it's an excuse to allow more pollution and natural recourses destruction.
Energy is the base of everything. While artificial dependency on coal and oil isn't changed in favor of a new energetic model worldwide, earth will keep on being destroyed and the next generations will have all the right to accuse the current ones, us, of that crime.
Common sense says this was so all along.
Even before anything was mined at all? :) But I suppose you mean since mass production and planned obsolescence really got started.
No. Ever since dumping began. Dumping anything, produced in whatever manner.
Waste is only waste for humans when a certain purpose has been served. Production is molding matter for a certain purpose.
Both before production and after dumping, the matter is the same for nature's purposes, but structured differently. Nature would have it in the structure that is there before production, people would have it for a certain purpose, but in the process they screw up the structure.
The relocation of elements which changes the structure of matter in nature is the ecological concern. Waste per se isn't a concern, but waste in certain places and in certain quantities is the concern.
These days waste is found in such quantities that it is basically everywhere. To simplify, there's something wrong with everything. This due to the fact that production has boosted up massively.
Production produces waste. Waste management and recycling hasn't kept up in the same proportion. We have mass production but no mass recycling. Even if we did generate recycling on massive scales, this also would have to be done in the right way. Not in name only, not as another lucrative business for some, not as a populist political victory, but the right way from nature's point of view.
Ecological conscience has arisen only very recently, during the latter half of the last century. Medieval people were far more conscientious in what they produced - it's as if they knew that production inevitably produces waste - and they recycled more conscientiously, because everything man-made was expensive. This is how waste sort of managed itself in those times, whereas now it doesn't.
We have to regain this conscientiousness again, but the quantities of waste and absolutely ruthless ways of production have gotten out of hand a long time ago. This is why I don't share Jax's optimism. I don't see recycling and ecological awareness anywhere near the proportions where it should be in order to make the world sustainable for future humanity. Importantly, I don't see the highups display any concern for the situation, but they are crucial in this.
I share Belfrager's sentiment.
Returning on forests, a forest is a complex eco-system that can't be recreated once destroyed. What people call "reforestation" it's just planting a vast area of mono-culture that generates ecological disasters, not sustainable eco-systems.
Additionally, such reforestation is been presented as a solution while in fact it's an excuse to allow more pollution and natural recourses destruction.
You're talking about production forests. Production forests are a solution in the sense that they safeguard natural forests from being cut down, but they don't count as reforestation. However, given a few decades of alone time, even production forests start to turn into more regular forests. Reforestation in the sense I'm talking about is primarily a natural process. You leave some ground alone for a while, and before you know it, all kinds of trees and bushes are growing there. There might be some particular human involvement in planting certain trees in certain spots to e.g. safeguard certain areas from sea wind to allow a larger variety to arise, but the primary guiding principle is to leave things the @#$ alone.
Common sense says this was so all along.
Even before anything was mined at all? :) But I suppose you mean since mass production and planned obsolescence really got started.
No. Ever since dumping began. Dumping anything, produced in whatever manner.
Considering that dumping is post-industrial revolution, I fail to see any significant disagreement.
Common sense says this was so all along.
Even before anything was mined at all? :) But I suppose you mean since mass production and planned obsolescence really got started.
No. Ever since dumping began. Dumping anything, produced in whatever manner.
Considering that dumping is post-industrial revolution, I fail to see any significant disagreement.
Did you know that archeology is mostly digging up what people of old, even pre-industrial times, dumped?
I fail to see why you would construe the meaning of the word the way you did. Except to disagree just for the sake of disagreement.
Btw, I agree with your views on reforestation. Forest catches up on desolate ground amazingly fast and cultured forest can also turn into real forest in a matter of a few decades. I have seen it happen. And yes, reforestation would be the solution. However, it would be a solution if it would be actually done. The actual trend in the world is increasing deforestation, particularly visible around the equator - and those forests don't catch up as fast by themselves the way temperate forests do, so I have been told.
As it is, all those so-called solutions would be a means to decelerate the destruction - which is happening only if you believe the hype - rather than repairing and healing nature, which would be the actual solution.
Did you know that archeology is mostly digging up what people of old, even pre-industrial times, dumped?
I fail to see why you would construe the meaning of the word the way you did. Except to disagree just for the sake of disagreement.
You seem to be quite insistent that in a time when all they threw away was food waste, broken pots, and the like, while metal was properly recycled, said dump sites were a better place to look for metals than mines. I interpreted the word dumping as throwing away perfectly reusable materials, which I think is quite a reasonable definition actually, because otherwise what you wrote doesn't seem to make much sense at all.
As it is, all those so-called solutions would be a means to decelerate the destruction - which is happening only if you believe the hype - rather than repairing and healing nature, which would be the actual solution.
There's a reason I tend to avoid e.g. palm oil and soy. They're both quite terrible for the environment in e.g. Indonesia.
Did you know that archeology is mostly digging up what people of old, even pre-industrial times, dumped?
I fail to see why you would construe the meaning of the word the way you did. Except to disagree just for the sake of disagreement.
You seem to be quite insistent that in a time when all they threw away was food waste, broken pots, and the like, while metal was properly recycled, said dump sites were a better place to look for metals than mines.
If metals were properly recycled back then, archeologists would not be finding metal objects, glass, etc. from ancient ages. True, those objects were not dumped at garbage heaps the way they are now. In those times, such objects were lost either accidentally or in disasters. Still, buried treasures from old times are non-different from current industrial dumping sites given how you presented your argument: You can mine them for metals and minerals easier than mines. (Incidentally, this illustrates my general view that waste in large scale is a recent phenomenon, while recycling has, in contrast, been largely forgotten and is only being relearned - poorly.)
Also, the way I am talking about this stems from my view towards wealth and money in general: Money (gems and precious metals in old times) is just a detour to the primary needs, which are food and clothes. So, even though this must seem exaggerated to you, I tend to regard gems and precious metals as "dump" already before they are dumped. That's what I meant by "dumped".
Cognitive dissonance, sorry about it, but happens every day.
However, given a few decades of alone time, even production forests start to turn into more regular forests. Reforestation in the sense I'm talking about is primarily a natural process.
Such natural process can never beat the non natural destruction it is been made.
It was curious that you mentioned that deforestation always existed in history, that's very true.
Please take a look at The prehistoric and preindustrial deforestation of Europe (http://www.wsl.ch/staff/niklaus.zimmermann/papers/QuatSciRev_Kaplan_2009.pdf), a must read paper to have the notion of we are talking about.
But it happens that that study finishes at 1850. Seeing the last maps of that period one understands what was the starting point of forests for industrialization, that has a pressure zillion of times bigger than much sparse medieval populations ever had.
I'd like very much to find an equivalent study that compares 1850 and the present. Then, and only then, I'll have any optimism.
I'd like very much to find an equivalent study that compares 1850 and the present. Then, and only then, I'll have any optimism.
I tend to suspect that the current picture in Europe may turn out to be surprisingly bright. This due to the fact that European industries have turned to ravage the rest of the world. I.e. the situation at home looks optimistic, but deceptively so. Nobody is going to give a detailed and balanced report on this. The interested parties are keen to undermine any objectivity in such data.
I tend to suspect that the current picture in Europe may turn out to be surprisingly bright. This due to the fact that European industries have turned to ravage the rest of the world.
It's true, but it's also true that Europe was the first to raise the sustainability problem and to do something to minimize it. European citizens are increasingly sensitized towards these problems and I notice a general acceptance to change some behaviors and policies.
However, it's everything still very much superficial.
"Action must be taken now against the impact of climate change on the world's population, writes Kofi Annan, chairman of The Elders and former United Nations secretary-general."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kofi-annan-a-united-call-for-action-on-climate-change/2014/01/22/3694fa0c-82c1-11e3-9dd4-e7278db80d86_story.html?hpid=z3
chairman of The Elders
Who the hell are those self called "The Elders"? represented by such a nullity as Kofi Annan, nothing good is to be expected.
I really find funny those that when in a position that they can do something they do nothing, turn into accomplices and, later, pretends to give lessons.
Like cork they maintain buoyancy no matter how the wind blows.
Don't let such "Elders" keep on fooling you. Annans, Mandelas and the such are the other face of the same coin.
It seems time to repost the reminder (http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?id=14217132) from the original thread. It had a lot about Muslims, Vivaldi is still running on beer (https://vivaldi.net/forum/debates/204-the-world-in-2030), and this thread has taken an environmental turn. All fine, but it should be about the world starting 15 years 11 months and 3 days from now.
Keep in mind that this thread is supposed to be about the world in 2030, not the world in 2013 or 1913 or 1813. If you want to banter, try to figure out where USA or Glasgow will be in 2030.
As it happens the US National Intelligence Council has done just that (completely ignoring Glasgow's role in the scheme of things incidentally), in their report Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds (http://www.dni.gov/nic/globaltrends). From the preface: Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds is the fifth installment in the National Intelligence Council’s series aimed at providing a framework for thinking about the future. As with previous editions, we hope that this report will stimulate strategic thinking by identifying critical trends and potential discontinuities. We distinguish between megatrends, those factors that will likely occur under any scenario, and game-changers, critical variables whose trajectories are far less certain. Finally, as our appreciation of the diversity and complexity of various factors has grown, we have increased our attention to scenarios or alternative worlds we might face.
We are at a critical juncture in human history, which could lead to widely contrasting futures. It is our contention that the future is not set in stone, but is malleable, the result of an interplay among megatrends, game-changers and, above all, human agency. Our effort is to encourage decisionmakers—whether in government or outside—to think and plan for the long term so that negative futures do not occur and positive ones have a better chance of unfolding.
In other words megatrends are major changes that will continue unless interrupted, gamechangers are interrupts, and potential worlds are some outcomes.
MEGATRENDS
Individual Empowerment: Individual empowerment will accelerate owing to poverty reduction, growth of the global middle class, greater educational attainment, widespread use of new communications and manufacturing technologies, and health-care advances.
Diffusion of Power: There will not be any hegemonic power. Power will shift to networks and coalitions in a multipolar world.
Demographic Patterns: The demographic arc of instability will narrow. Economic growth might decline in “aging” countries. Sixty percent of the world’s population will live in urbanized areas; migration will increase.
Food, Water, Energy Nexus: Demand for these resources will grow substantially owing to an increase in the global population. Tackling problems pertaining to one commodity will be linked to supply and demand for the others.
GAME-CHANGERS
Crisis-Prone Global Economy: Will global volatility and imbalances among players with different economic interests result in collapse? Or will greater multipolarity lead to increased resiliency in the global economic order?
Governance Gap: Will governments and institutions be able to adapt fast enough to harness change instead of being overwhelmed by it?
Potential for Increased Conflict: Will rapid changes and shifts in power lead to more intrastate and interstate conflicts?
Wider Scope of Regional Instability: Will regional instability, especially in the Middle East and South Asia, spill over and create global insecurity?
Impact of New Technologies: Will technological breakthroughs be developed in time to boost economic productivity and solve the problems caused by a growing world population, rapid urbanization, and climate change?
Role of the United States: Will the US be able to work with new partners to reinvent the international system?
POTENTIAL WORLDS
Stalled Engines: In the most plausible worst-case scenario, the risks of interstate conflict increase. The US draws inward and globalization stalls.
Fusion: In the most plausible best-case outcome, China and the US collaborate on a range of issues, leading to broader global cooperation.
Gini-Out-of-the-Bottle: Inequalities explode as some countries become big winners and others fail. Inequalities within countries increase social tensions. Without completely disengaging, the US is no longer the “global policeman.”
Nonstate World: Driven by new technologies, nonstate actors take the lead in confronting global challenges.
The demographic arc of instability will narrow.
That refers to this (http://www.stimson.org/spotlight/whither-the-demographic-arc-of-instability-/), the current arc of countries racked with young people below 25. Young people are violent and dangerous, they cause most violent crime, they are quick to riot, they are easily led into armies. In short they cause instability and suffering to the world around them.
This youth infection will be mostly contained to Africa and Afghanistan by 2030.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stimson.org%2Fimages%2Fuploads%2Farc_of_instability2000.jpg&hash=61cc22d7eaad2e68a79cd71ac6d34be7" rel="cached" data-hash="61cc22d7eaad2e68a79cd71ac6d34be7" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.stimson.org/images/uploads/arc_of_instability2000.jpg)
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stimson.org%2Fimages%2Fuploads%2Farc_of_instability2030.jpg&hash=889b9a6318dfb96d6716bad5555a5813" rel="cached" data-hash="889b9a6318dfb96d6716bad5555a5813" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.stimson.org/images/uploads/arc_of_instability2030.jpg)
The respectable council doesn't impress me much. The only megatrend I agree with is the Food, Water, and Energy Nexus. Indeed, there's a nexus, and whichever business-oriented mind manages to monetise on this will win. Everybody else will be subject to the piss beer scenario I mentioned here first.
Individual Empowerment: Where did they detect this? A megatrend no less??!! Depends on their definition, I suppose. If loosening employment laws, enabling mass layoffs, is the definition of individual empowerment, then I have to agree.
Diffusion of Power: Multipolar world? If anything, the world has been clearly unipolar since the end of the Cold War. Without any gamechanger, this is how it will remain in 2030 too.
Etc. The text of some ordinary net commentators is more insightful than the report of this panel of experts.
Individual Empowerment: Where did they detect this? A megatrend no less??!! Depends on their definition, I suppose. If loosening employment laws, enabling mass layoffs, is the definition of individual empowerment, then I have to agree.
It is expounded in the paragraph, as well as the report itself:
poverty reduction, growth of the global middle class, greater educational attainment, widespread use of new communications and manufacturing technologies, and health-care advances
All of these are real, and easy to document. The growth of a global middle class is indeed a megatrend (though I dislike that word, well blame Naisbitt).
It is expounded in the paragraph, as well as the report itself: poverty reduction, growth of the global middle class, greater educational attainment, widespread use of new communications and manufacturing technologies, and health-care advances
All of these are real, and easy to document. The growth of a global middle class is indeed a megatrend (though I dislike that word, well blame Naisbitt).
Yes, the unemployed in the West appear to be more wealthy and better educated. I still strongly disagree they are individually more empowered as a result. The forced use of new communications is not empowering anyone either. The wide population of video game addicts is not indicative of empowerment...
As the world goes on, everything makes less sense. This is crucially due to increasing use of Orwellian language, which is an undeniable megatrend.
The world employment (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.EMP.TOTL.SP.ZS/countries/1W-EU-US?display=graph&cid=DEC_SS_WBGDataEmail_EXT) (according to ILO) has been basically flat since 2004. 60% of people above 15 years old are employed (40% are unemployed, retired, in school, self-employed, or not looking for work). The US had an increasing employment rate up to 2007 (62%), fell through the crisis and has slowly grown since to 58% in 2012. EU hasn't shown any such recovery and is basically back at 2004 levels (51.5%).
It is much better to be wealthy or educated and unemployed than being poor, uneducated, and unemployed. Basically today's unemployed are better off than yesterday's employed, to the dismay of some economists who think the unemployed don't suffer enough and thus aren't forced into the work marked.
We still have a demographic bulge worldwide of better educated, but still basically uneducated/unskilled, workers entering the work market. A lot new jobs have to be created, and a lot new jobs have been created.
Automation will take over as the bulge dissipates (there will be more potential employees in Africa and Afghanistan, less everywhere else), but if I should venture a guess it would be that the employment rate will stay essentially flat in the next 16 years as well, that the world employment rate in 2030 will still remain at around 60%.
I repeat, I strongly disagree with the use of the word empowerment there. There's no justification to use this word in this connection. It's clearly Orwellian.
As to employment, I disagree with that too. People can work within their own farms, officially unemployed, but having the happiest of lives. No statistics can reflect this, never did, never will. In fact, the projection that rural lifestyle will recede, indicates that nature-driven people - which to me means everyone worth to be called human - will become unhappier.
Brainwashing and doublespeak remain forever condemnable, even when people willingly delude themselves and each other.
Farmers cannot be called "nature-driven people", they are cultivating the land, causing less 'nature' rather than more. You could make the case that hunter-gatherers are nature-driven people, but they have been a tiny minority for millennia.
Farmers are a very big part of the massively human-cultivated Dutch landscape. We took our country from the sea to have more farmland. Forest was turned into heath for the purposes of sheep herding, and into many other kinds of farmland as well. And I'm talking about time immemorial here; we didn't even realize (Dutch) heath was a human creation until fairly recently. A few forests were cut down for building ships, but the big push toward that frighteningly low 2% figure in 1760 was all farmers. Because like I said or implied before, ships have been built using production forests for a very long time. It's the only way to ensure a constant supply.
NB I'm not calling this a bad thing. The fight against the sea has been a rather democratic endeavor for 800 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoogheemraadschap). That's how deeply entreched the polder model (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poldermodel) is in Dutch culture, although I have my doubts whether the person who coined the term was properly familiar with the historical underpinnings. Still, the term is quite appropriate. It also aligns with femininity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede's_cultural_dimensions_theory) in Hofstede's model, although I strongly dislike the way he uses the terms masculinity and femininity because he effectively defines masculinity as being a bunch of collective asses and femininity as being more or less decent people. If you're wondering, Norway, Sweden, and The Netherlands are "feminine" societies, while most others tend to lean more toward the "masculine" side.
Farmers cannot be called "nature-driven people", they are cultivating the land, causing less 'nature' rather than more. You could make the case that hunter-gatherers are nature-driven people, but they have been a tiny minority for millennia.
Says the guy who prefers cities in any case. Seriously.
Frenzie describes a very intensive farming environment, something that my country is experiencing only in the few most recent decades. Until this decade, we always had massive forests. According to some conjecture, part of the reason why Estonia and Finland were colonised was deforestation in Europe, but by that time the people here were already Viking-style herders and farmers. So, farmers and forest can survive side by side, if human needs are managed moderately.
It's not easy to put these things in English, because it's a foreign language to all of us. Of course farmers mould landscape, but there are degrees to it. Cityscape is not really landscape any more; it's more like moonscape. In comparison, farmscape is still close enough to human-less nature. Even though by "nature" I never meant human-less nature, but allowed for an acceptable degree of human landscape-shaping.
According to some sociologist (I can name him if you want), there can be distinguished these kinds of national temperaments corresponding to life environment:
- Forest people
- Mountain people
- Sea people
- Grassland people
Considering our current topic, we can add city people. Now, Jax, which kind of these people is or is not nature driven? All people mould their environment to some extent, but which kind of people absolutely depend on concretely non-natural environment, if this indeed be a particular distinct temperament?
These temperaments are not necessarily tied to ethnicity, even though the author spoke about them this way. They can be considered individual psychological preferences, so feel free to identify your own.
Now, to talk about farming as non-natural as if this were an argument to favour urbanisation, this is also rather Orwellian...
Environmentalism, and the ideal of the pristine, untouched environment, has largely grown as an urban phenomena. Environmental parties are almost universally more popular in cities than in the countryside (there must be exceptions, I don't know them), which their rural opponents rarely fail to point out.
It is not so surprising, higher density of living means that people are affected more closely by polluting/damaging activities. You wouldn't notice the pollution from a car in the countryside, but it would cause significant harm together with thousands other in a city. Urban citizen are less directly affected by the dilemma between economic activity and environmentalism. Farming is the greatest impact humanity has had on nature. City dwellers also eat, but can be blissfully unaware where the food comes from.
Frenzie describes a very intensive farming environment, something that my country is experiencing only in the few most recent decades.
I find that somewhat surprising. If memory doesn't betray me, for many centuries we were exporting primarily herring and cheese to the neighborhood of Latvia and Estonia in exchange for large quantities of grain. And weren't the vast Eastern European grain fields instrumental in Hitler's autarky plans?
Considering our current topic, we can add city people. Now, Jax, which kind of these people is or is not nature driven? All people mould their environment to some extent, but which kind of people absolutely depend on concretely non-natural environment, if this indeed be a particular distinct temperament?
There are cities and cities. You sound a bit like Guido Gezelle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guido_Gezelle). :)
Frenzie describes a very intensive farming environment, something that my country is experiencing only in the few most recent decades.
I find that somewhat surprising. If memory doesn't betray me, for many centuries we were exporting primarily herring and cheese to the neighborhood of Latvia and Estonia in exchange for large quantities of grain.
Estonia and Latvia have always been fish exporters, not importers. Well, we import salmon, so call us fish traders. But grain trade should be negligible, at least from here in your direction.
And weren't the vast Eastern European grain fields instrumental in Hitler's autarky plans?
That be Ukraine. Ukraine's connection with the Baltic Sea is historically limited and tangential.
You know, you can make a stark contrast between Netherlands and Belgium. Please understand that ethnic, cultural, linguistic, historical, geological, environmental, etc. differences in the expanse between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea are even bigger.
Cityscape is not really landscape any more; it's more like moonscape.
Cities don't serve the initial reasons that caused their appearance, that has finished with the industrial revolution.
I think that, with cities turning into concentration camps where all modern techniques of manipulation are exercised, resistance will be formed and organized at the countryside. However I see an important role for clandestine cells inside cities, the "Needle in a haystack" strategy being always effective.
Well well... this seems as some lousy revolutionary manual... :)
We are living increasingly difficult times and with a new problem, no one has an external referential to know what is happening, to know what to do.
When a pro-comunist revolution was done in my country I remember that, in the middle of all the confusion, people went at night to their house's balconies to syntonize the International BBC and try to know what's was really happening and what to do to fight, how to resist.
Today, BBC will be the voice of the enemy...
I see a very dark scenario until 2030 and probably for longer. Just see how police forces from all the world are being equipped and trained. They are preparing to fight a specific enemy - the populations.
Okay, I quickly checked. Dutch exports to the Baltic Sea consisted of textiles, beer, herring, cheese, butter, and later* salt, wine, and colonial imports. On the way back the primary cargo was grain. Some of the most important ports were Riga, Dantzig (Gdańsk), and Königsberg, but that's not even the tip of the iceberg. I can't find where the grain originally came from, but I can tell you that the East Sea trade was the backbone of Dutch wealth. The Black Sea is, from a Dutch perspective, fairly irrelevant. Doubtless around there they think much the same about The Netherlands. Anyway, are you saying that the Ukraine would be part of e.g. Riga's** hinterland or that it's more likely the grain came from Poland? :)
* That'd roughly be from the 16th century onward.
** I realize that's Latvia.
And weren't the vast Eastern European grain fields instrumental in Hitler's autarky plans?
That be Ukraine. Ukraine's connection with the Baltic Sea is historically limited and tangential.
Then what was up with the land around Leningrad (or whatever it was called at the time)? Oil? Total domination without an obvious strategic target?
Anyway, are you saying that the Ukraine would be part of e.g. Riga's** hinterland or that it's more likely the grain came from Poland? :)
* That'd roughly be from the 16th century onward.
** I realize that's Latvia.
If you talk about 16th century and prior, then we (Estonia and Latvia) were a colony/province of Germany/Sweden. Consequently, expect us to be exploited in every nasty way. However, from 16th to 18th century we had a near-constant period of wars, so at times during this era we'd either be exploited to starvation or nothing would be exported because there's nothing to export and it was not safe.
From 18th century onwards, we (Estonia and Latvia) were a province of Russia. Consequently, as long as Russia lacked a safe port/passage in the Black Sea, South Russian/Ukrainian grain would very likely be exported through Estonian and Latvian ports, including Riga. In this sense the whole Russian empire was our hinterland. The Baltic provinces, particularly Finland, represented a kind of civilised West in miniature within the borders of Russian empire.
A little more spice from the soon-to-perish parent of this thread, starting with a little Islamic concern.
found an unopened can beer in a wall not too long back. It's several years older than me making it rival your vintage beer. "Country Club Malt Liquor". If you wanna compare how can v bottle holds up after decades it can be arranged.
I can hardly believe Country Club Malt Liquor ever came in cans… (I drink it from 40s, ya know? :)) It's a sub-mediocre brew, by anyone's standards. Sorta like calling Thunderbird (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbird_(wine)) an American Classic… (Which –BTW– I always drank un-chilled, which would be "warm" or room temperature; in other words, off the shelf. because then I didn't have to wait for the "best" result.
Those of you who have never been cold, poor or less than pure may not relate…)
But the question was, What will the world of 2030 be like? (I intend to be there…)
I, too, don't know. What I fear the most is that it will reflect the social-democrat trajectory: GB, Europe and the USA failing to defend themselves, because their "intellectuals" can't find values worth preserving; Arabs and other Mohamad "followers" failing to sufficiently invoke our ire, but making (procreating) many more of themselves.
Assimilation is not a term that "they" accept. Islam is an all-encompassing "faith." And its adherents can only accept it ascendence.
Would that Western Civilization were the same!
It is a "Clash of Civilizations"… The Individual vs. the Collective. Nothing new, eh? :)
But the question was, What will the world of 2030 be like? (I intend to be there…)
I, too, don't know. What I fear the most is that it will reflect the social-democrat trajectory: GB, Europe and the USA failing to defend themselves, because their "intellectuals" can't find values worth preserving; Arabs and other Mohamad "followers" failing to sufficiently invoke our ire, but making (procreating) many more of themselves.
Assimilation is not a term that "they" accept. Islam is an all-encompassing "faith." And its adherents can only accept it ascendence.
Would that Western Civilization were the same!
It is a "Clash of Civilizations"… The Individual vs. the Collective. Nothing new, eh? :)
Well, it's only 16 years and 7 months to go.
You seem to attach superhuman capabilities to the 20% (1.5 billion) of the world population that are Muslims (besides viewed from Beijing where I am Islam is a part of Western Civilization). What the number of Muslim will be would be a matter of assumptions, mine is that there will be a significantly lower number of believing Muslims in 2030 than now. Purely based on population there will be a slightly larger proportion of Muslims in 2030. Compare that to the number of people in the world.
4 billions Asians (1/3 China, 1/3 India, 1/3 the rest)
1 billion Americans (1/3 USA, 1/6 Brazil, 1/2 the rest)
1 billion Africans (1/6 Nigerians, 1/6 North Africans)
1 billion Europeans (1/2 EU)
These are the 7 billion people today.
In 2030 this will have increased to 8 billion. Europe's population will have fallen by a little, the Americas' population growth increased by less than that. Half that extra billion comes from Africa, the other half Asia.
There will be two Asian bypasses before 2030. China will have the largest economy in the world, bypassing USA. India will have the largest population in the world, bypassing China.
Assimilation is not a term that "they" accept. Islam is an all-encompassing "faith." And its adherents can only accept it ascendence.
Oh, so that's why the Moroccan-Belgian youth took to the streets to protest fundamentalist Islam, and to show the rest of the population that they do not in fact share that homophobic misogyny. :)
You might find the following interesting.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/01/180293705/pew-study-many-muslims-believe-in-mixing-mosque-and-state
I never said Islam isn't scary, but in this country there's clearly a sizable contingent of (grand)children of Muslim immigrants who embrace our society's pluralism and who protest e.g. the special brand of pathetic losers featured in Femme de la rue (http://www.sponsume.com/project/femme-de-la-rue).
What I fear the most is that it will reflect the social-democrat trajectory: GB, Europe and the USA failing to defend themselves, because their "intellectuals" can't find values worth preserving; Arabs and other Mohamad "followers" failing to sufficiently invoke our ire, but making (procreating) many more of themselves.
Pew has made an estimate, Muslim populations by country: how big will each Muslim population be by 2030? (http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/jan/28/muslim-population-country-projection-2030)
Like for the rest of the world the population growth in Muslim areas is not due to procreating (more children), but from more adults. A few countries like Afghanistan has a total fertility way above replacement level, but Muslim countries in general are at or approaching replacement level.
Note that Pew here counts people from Muslim areas, having Muslim parents, not whether they actually are Muslims, followers of Islam, or even believe in one or more gods.
Jax, it seems we've had an ongoing problem trying to figure out what the future would look like. As a case in point, go back to stuff from the 1950s where people were trying to guess what life would be like in 2000. What a howl!!! Almost every guess wrong. By now, according to those 1950s documents, we should be living like the Jetsons on steroids. I don't know about where you live, but around here we're still running short of flying cars that fold up into a briefcase so you can put your car next to your desk.
I imagine that if current trends continue, some countries that exist today won't be on the map in 2030, and some countries will be on the map for the first time by then. Power may shift from one country to another-- right now, the USA is the lone superpower but only a fool would maintain that this will be the case then, we may have company in the superpower arena or we may have been replaced entirely--- your guess is as good as mine on that one. We might do a little more with solar power and wind power, but don't expect fossil fuel and nuclear power to go away any time soon. After those guesses-- well, good luck.
2030 is not exactly far into science fiction-land, but 17 years from now. 17 years ago was 1996, a different place certainly, but still quite recognizable as similar to the world we now live in. This is the list of new countries in this period:
- East Timor (previously occupied by Indonesia)
- Serbia-Montenegro split into Serbia, Montenegro, and Kosova
- Sudan split into Sudan and South Sudan
In 2030 Scotland may be independent, with Edinburgh the new capital. Spain may similarly split, while the two Koreas might reunite.
The two countries in the world with a huge population, India and China, will become more significant as they become relatively richer, as they most likely (but not certainly) will. Assuming this China will get a higher GDP than the US in the period, and India at some point later. It is unlikely that the average American will remain more than 4 times as rich as the average Chinese or Indian for a very long time span. India and China are unlikely to split. Though stranger things have happened 17 years is a short span for it to happen in.
An interesting group to watch in this period is The Next Eleven (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Eleven)The Next Eleven (known also by the numeronym N-11) are the eleven countries – Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Turkey, South Korea, and Vietnam – identified by Goldman Sachs investment bank and economist Jim O'Neill in a research paper as having a high potential of becoming, along with the BRICs/BRICS, the world's largest economies in the 21st century.
[...]
In short there will be very little currently-unheard-of technology in action in 2030. The time from new discovery to commonplace usable products can be measured in decades. The vast majorty of products and services in 2030 already exist, but in a conceptual/prototype version. There will of course be new exciting discoveries in the intervening years, but they will not amount to much by then.
We have (almost) all the pieces for 2030, we just don't know how they will play.
I disagree for two reasons. Future is not the result of a building process and life can change radically without anything new.
Your words only apply to technology (at the wider sense, not just computers) but "how the world will be" it's much more than just technology.
That post was primarily intended in the context of technology, that while the technology dominant then will be different from now, but not unheard of, and which technology will win is hard to predict.
But now that you mention it, many non-technology pieces will be known as well, again without knowing how they will play out. E.g. the EU will most likely be around in 2030, but in which form? There will probably be more members, but will some countries have left as well? Possible to guess, impossible to know. Albania will probably be a member, Turkey possibly, Ukraine unlikely, Iraq will not be a member.
E.g. the EU will most likely be around in 2030, but in which form?
That's easy...Islamic.
There will be more of us.
This post (http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?id=14314402) is more appropriate in this thread. The world population is growing, slowly, unevenly.My reason for this timeous reminder is that around the 1950's the population was circa 48 million in Gt Britain. Now it is over 60 million and projected in the next decade or so to continually rise. This is an ISLAND and NOT VERY BIG.
[IMGLEFT=https://files.myopera.com/jax/files/world%20population%201950-2030.png]http://A population increase from 50 million in 1950 to 62 million in 2010 is very low, among the lowest in the world. I made a chart of populations of select countries in 1950, 2010, and 2030 (projected).
Had Britain grown by world average, it would have 137 million inhabitants in 2010, and 166 million in 2030. Even if it had merely grown by US speed, Britain would have had 102 millions in 2010 and 121 million in 2030. With such a demographical shortfall no wonder the UK has fallen so far behind the US. I used Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_and_future_population) for the numbers, which in turn used the US Census Bureau.
Projections are of course dependent on conditions that may change. The projection for Norway for instance was that the country would almost reach 5 millions by 2030. In fact it reached that milestone earlier this year. Lately the population growth in Norway has exceeded the world average, basically because more people have immigrated and fewer people have emigrated than expected. This net influx is largely from EU countries.
This will be more pronounced with even more open countries than Norway. For "an ISLAND and NOT VERY BIG" spare a thought for Singapore, which is projected to have a population of 7 million in 2030, up from 1 million in 1950. If Britain had the population density of Singapore 22 billion people would be living there.
Population growth has been a fundamental force in human development. Without it we'd still be hunter gathers living under trees. As population grows fears will turn into solutions and human existence will evolve. That's how it's always been on this island we call Earth.
Hhhm, a kind of wild assumption. With so many countries breaking up into smaller places over the years seems people like small.
Population growth has been a fundamental force in human development. Without it we'd still be hunter gathers living under trees. As population grows fears will turn into solutions and human existence will evolve. That's how it's always been on this island we call Earth.
(https://files.myopera.com/jax/files/world%20population%201950-2030.png)
Sure, though the solution is either new technology for higher carrying capacity and/or an excess of death before reaching another equilibrium. That it "will turn out fine in the end" , for some value of "fine", may be of little consolation for those caught up in the upheavals, especially when the upheavals involve excess death.
Rapid population growth may not mean trouble, but it tends to stir things up a bit. It often goes together with economic growth, but the growth is likely to be uneven, and some get richer while others grow more populous. If there is a precarious balance of power between different groups in a society, and that balance is shifted, strife may follow. The end result may be good, South Korea is an example of a place with a tumultuous past and a prosperous present, but places with less social cohesion risk being torn apart.
Growth occurs through more births (a greater fertility rate), less death (longer life expectancy), or net migration (more people immigrate than emigrate). More births means more teenagers. People born today will be 17 in 2030, a ripe age for a riot. Longer life expectancy, older people sticking around rather than dying young like they used to, has lead to population growth especially in places in Asia, but also in Europe and the Americas, with Africa coming up. The world is nearing another milestone, when a majority of the population die at the age of 70 or higher.
Older people are less likely to riot or commit crimes, but are also more loath to change. Migration is quite literally mixing this up, as migrants tend to be younger than the native population (the Florida phenomena excepted), and migration mostly goes from poorer countries with lower average age to higher average. Young people, potential trouble makers in their own countries, can become agents for change in their new host countries.
In the 90's North Africa was fingered as a demographic time bomb for today's world, China on the other hand should be fairly calm. Looking ahead in the same manner, one place that has a strong potential to be trouble-spot in 2030 is Afghanistan. Two countries to watch are Nigeria and Ethiopia, they are large strategic countries with high economic and population growth and significant internal conflicts.
World-wide, if you look at the 60 years from 1950 to 2010 and compare with the projections for 2010-2030, the most dramatic growth spurt is behind us. Moving towards the older part of the age spectrum, as we all do, life expectancy increases because we don't usually die young any more. However the maximum age at death hasn't moved much, we still die in the decades between 70 and 100. The good news, extrapolating from the richest countries, we are increasingly living relatively healthy lives in those decades.
This means, until there is any technology to actually increase life spans statistically significantly, both the growth spurts from more children and the growth spurt from longer life will be behind us. If life spans were to double, so would the population. The world would also become more conservative. If 50 year olds are resistant to change, imagine 150 years olds. Any such technology would be unlikely to appear before 2030, and if it were it still wouldn't have any demographic consequences for many decades to come.
I imagine nothing amicable. In the context of evolution how you or I feel isn't important. Often development comes from the clearing of saturated niches. Old ways can die hard regardless of how useful they are. Despite this we are still evolving. Even in the environments we create we change ourselves. The evidence is scattered through our history. Rise to collapse to a new rise.
Happy people are less likely to riot. But as population grows under a system that does not resources become more valuable and so the means to control them too. Agriculture, husbantry and architecture were most likely results of needing to support/produce for more. Remove one solution and collapse happens. Most likely like with the Mississippian culture who achieved great cities, agriculture and trade but simply fell apart apparently under it's own prosperity. Or more likely when they hit the wall of development work animals relieved.
To bring it back on topic the future does depend on the technology to support an ever growing and consuming population. Without it there will be heartbreak. But who's to say what will be needed to bring that development? By 2015 there will be more nations developing wanting resources with only more to come until we reach or build a new wall.
As for a comment on life expectancy. We really don't know how long the human body can be pushed or how that will affect the person. What is the mindset of someone 150 years old? How does that change a more active 'younger' 80 year old who's at their midlife crisis point? Given most geriatric meds if given to me now would destroy my liver and kidney before I reached age 60 I wonder how close we are to any substantial change in life expectancy.
Well, in 30 years white people will be a minority or close to it at least in the USA. I'm not quite sure what the ramifications of that would be yet, but I do know it's an unprecedented phenomenon.
Depending on where I am at, I already feel like the minority. :right:
Well, in 30 years white people will be a minority or close to it at least in the USA. I'm not quite sure what the ramifications of that would be yet, but I do know it's an unprecedented phenomenon.
By which I assume you mean US white. Whatever that is to be said about race, the US way of classifying it (white/black/native/Asian/other/mixed/Hispanic) makes no sense outside the US. It seem a way to track the relative influence of the ethnic composition of America. A century ago I assume the races would have been Irish, German, Italian, Slavic, English, or some such. By 2030, if they are still doing it, at a minimum "Asian" would be split into South Asian, East Asian, and South East Asian, and African come up as a separate category and/or black going in the direction of Hispanic. As a classification scheme it is a mess.
The scheme being what it is 72,4% of the US population self-classified as white in 2010, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_American#Demographic_information), down from a maximum of 89.8% in 1930. That number is highly unlikely to go below 50% in the remaining 17 years.
I would assume that a larger part of the immigrants will be from Asian and African countries, and a smaller part from the rest of the Americas.
In the rest of the world white, however defined, has always been a minority.
As for a comment on life expectancy. We really don't know how long the human body can be pushed or how that will affect the person. What is the mindset of someone 150 years old? How does that change a more active 'younger' 80 year old who's at their midlife crisis point? Given most geriatric meds if given to me now would destroy my liver and kidney before I reached age 60 I wonder how close we are to any substantial change in life expectancy.
We just need to figure out how to trick our cells into thinking they're younger than they are. Attack the cause of the disease, not the symptoms. ;)
Then treat the problems that will cause. The Hayflick limit must serve some purpose.
The only "purpose" I can think of is that for the success of our genes, it's not necessary for us to be alive past 50-ish—maybe 70-ish in our modern world. But we might be able to wrest control away from our genes and to put control into our own hands. Hopefully even during our lifetime.
But after 2030. Even if some blue-sky project actually was able to extend life beyond current limits before 2030, it wouldn't have any significant impact on the population until the users got seriously older in the following decades.
The only "purpose" I can think of is that for the success of our genes, it's not necessary for us to be alive past 50-ish—maybe 70-ish in our modern world.
Life expediency varies greatly in nature. Often to fit what benefits the organism the most. So I'm with sang in wondering if it's a guaranteed good thing to live longer. There's a natural order of turning experience over to new thinking that may be needed for development.
How many developments wouldn't exist if we lived a lot longer? Why would I need to write anything down for posterity? I'll just tell my great great grand kids when they get here. But then why even have kids until age 50 or so. Meaning population really wouldn't grow. Instead we may stagnate. What are we losing when we find the fountain of youth?
But we might be able to wrest control away from our genes and to put control into our own hands.
Surely nothing can go wrong with that. :worried:
But now that you mention it, many non-technology pieces will be known as well, again without knowing how they will play out.
Conflict is as easily fought over ideas as resources as we all know. What does an Islamic dominated world do opposed to a christian one or non-religious one? The pieces are the same but the play can change quickly. How does a 'Cuban missile crisis' play out today when the US is happy to risk drones in a "war on <anything>"? Or when do we go back to the 'Peace Keeping' label.
Life expediency varies greatly in nature. Often to fit what benefits the organism the most. So I'm with sang in wondering if it's a guaranteed good thing to live longer. There's a natural order of turning experience over to new thinking that may be needed for development.
I think that's just a myth. Why don't we ask Jaybro how much trouble he's had adapting to the Internet? :P
How many developments wouldn't exist if we lived a lot longer? Why would I need to write anything down for posterity? I'll just tell my great great grand kids when they get here. But then why even have kids until age 50 or so. Meaning population really wouldn't grow. Instead we may stagnate. What are we losing when we find the fountain of youth?
Insofar as I agree with your objections, I think they are far more applicable to robot servants (think of e.g. E.M. Forsters The Machine Stops, or a spiritual descendant like WALL-E) than to longevity.
Surely nothing can go wrong with that. [IMG=http://static.myopera.com/community/graphics/smiley.gif]
I'm sure we've all seen The Wrath of Kahn. But I'd also note that, besides freaky stuff from space, they have essentially no diseases.
The world in 2030 will be worst than thirty years ago, no matter how many times you post defunct threads jax.
Nothing could be worse than the world thirty years ago, except the world forty or more years ago.
2030 isn't thirty years in the future either, but sixteen. Just a little further ahead than 2000 was back.
Nothing could be worse than the world thirty years ago, except the world forty or more years ago.
Why so? Did you have a miserable childhood? I had a lovely childhood. And already as a child I knew that everything goes worse as time moves on. Thus far it has been completely confirmed.
The best life in the world was about thousand years ago. And then about three thousand years before that. Maybe times will become tolerable again in another two thousand years. What made you pick 2030 specifically?
The best life in the world was about thousand years ago.
Probably.
The more I study about medieval ages the more I see how the past is distorted by the falsity people learn at schools.
Urbanisation towards 2030.
Bright lights, big cities (http://www.economist.com/node/21642053)
Global desertification is picking up...
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.acegeography.com%2Fuploads%2F1%2F8%2F6%2F4%2F18647856%2F9422887_orig.gif&hash=97fcc355038da9ebc050da75341dea03" rel="cached" data-hash="97fcc355038da9ebc050da75341dea03" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.acegeography.com/uploads/1/8/6/4/18647856/9422887_orig.gif)
...and I am not so sure about the quality of the "invulnerable areas". Estonia for example has been rapidly and radically deforested during the past two decades. In our climate there's no agriculture possible without sufficient forests to circumscribe the fields. And cities are of course desert landscape from the ecological point of view.
A little over a year ago I wrote this (https://jseaton2311.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/2013-the-best-year-in-human-history/)...and 2014 was even better. You know, whether it’s local pub gossip, television bulletins or newspaper headlines, we’re more interested in what’s going wrong than with what’s going right. Judging the world through headlines is like judging a city by spending a night in its jail--you only see the worst problems. Objectively, 2014 has probably been the best year in history. Take war, for example--our lives now are more peaceful than at any time known to the human species. In a century that began with 9/11, the Iraq war, and genocide in Darfur, the claim that we are living in an unusually peaceful time may strike you as somewhere between delirium and absurdity, but there are fewer conflicts today, and wars don’t kill as many people as they did in the Middle Ages, for instance. Also, global rates of violent crime have plummeted in the last few decades and certainly the rise of education has played a large part in that. The Isis atrocities are all the more shocking perhaps, because they come against a backdrop of unprecedented world peace.
As usual however, religiosity continues to play its part in promoting violence and abuse. There has been a large increase in the number of countries with high or very high levels of social hostilities involving religion. Incidents of abuse against religious minorities were reported up, there were rises in religious motivated threats of violence, harassment of women over religious dress, mob violence related to religion, sectarian violence, and religion-related terrorist violence. We've all read the headlines pertaining to this, but look it up if you wish, in this PEW study (http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/355458.page), which shows religiously-inspired violence going up and all other violence going down.
I like to balance the good with the bad and try to get the whole big-picture of my reality. Others will continue to read and expound upon all the atrocities in the world which would often include looking at the advances in science as bad or even blasphemous. However, look on the bright side--if science can continue eroding religious belief at its present pace, we may one day soon actually live in a real paradise. :knight: :cheers:
The study can be found at...
http://www.pewforum.org/2014/01/14/religious-hostilities-reach-six-year-high/ (http://www.pewforum.org/2014/01/14/religious-hostilities-reach-six-year-high/)
I like to balance the good with the bad and try to get the whole big-picture of my reality. Others will continue to read and expound upon all the atrocities in the world which would often include looking at the advances in science as bad or even blasphemous. However, look on the bright side--if science can continue eroding religious belief at its present pace, we may one day soon actually live in a real paradise.
Last things first...you'll not see 'a real paradise' in your lifetime, and at 77, I certainly won't.
Scientists can and have produced things that are harmful on a grand scale.
I'm an agnostic who has a jaundiced view of religion. I see it as a silly diversion from the real world, but I don't see it as necessarily damaging. The great majority of adherents far outnumber the madmen who are running around with machetes and toxic brews.
Relatively speaking, the number of people whose outlook is shaped by science is small. We're all bathed in the world of science, but few of us have our outlooks shaped by it.
Scientists can and have produced things that are harmful on a grand scale.
Do you really believe it was a scientist's idea to build an atomic bomb? Puuuuullllleeeeease! :knight: :cheers:
Scientists can and have produced things that are harmful on a grand scale.
Do you really believe it was a scientist's idea to build an atomic bomb? Puuuuullllleeeeease! :knight: :cheers:
Who built it then? The Pope?
Do you really believe it was a scientist's idea to build an atomic bomb? Puuuuullllleeeeease!
Didn't Einstein write to President Roosevelt asking him to do just that…?
Really,
James, did you ever actually go to school? :) [ see here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szil%C3%A1rd_letter)… ] Do you have intermet access?
Or do you just read Howard Zinn's high school texts… ? :)
You and
Jimbro should form a club! (But I'm being unfair to
Jimbro: He's the Groucho Marx of the Left, who'd not deign to join any club that'd have
him as a member!)
Scientists are — people, sometimes paying attention and involved.
Global desertification is picking up...
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.acegeography.com%2Fuploads%2F1%2F8%2F6%2F4%2F18647856%2F9422887_orig.gif&hash=97fcc355038da9ebc050da75341dea03" rel="cached" data-hash="97fcc355038da9ebc050da75341dea03" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.acegeography.com/uploads/1/8/6/4/18647856/9422887_orig.gif)
...and I am not so sure about the quality of the "invulnerable areas". Estonia for example has been rapidly and radically deforested during the past two decades. In our climate there's no agriculture possible without sufficient forests to circumscribe the fields. And cities are of course desert landscape from the ecological point of view.
We are now in 2015, halfway to 2030 if we take the year 2000 as a starting point. 2030 is not far away. How the world in 2020 will be is pretty much a given, but there is still some leeway for 2030.
Water supply is an issue. While we're getting less desert in parts of the world, we are getting more in others, and crucially many of the migration patterns are into arid and semi-arid regions with high water stress. Climate change may also make some highly populated areas drier. Cities are not deserts, on the contrary they are highly diverse biotopes, to the annoyance of those needing pest control.
Scientists can and have produced things that are harmful on a grand scale.
Do you really believe it was a scientist's idea to build an atomic bomb? Puuuuullllleeeeease! :knight: :cheers:
Who built it then? The Pope?
Shapeshifting reptilians obviously :right:
Global desertification is picking up...
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.acegeography.com%2Fuploads%2F1%2F8%2F6%2F4%2F18647856%2F9422887_orig.gif&hash=97fcc355038da9ebc050da75341dea03" rel="cached" data-hash="97fcc355038da9ebc050da75341dea03" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.acegeography.com/uploads/1/8/6/4/18647856/9422887_orig.gif)
...and I am not so sure about the quality of the "invulnerable areas". Estonia for example has been rapidly and radically deforested during the past two decades. In our climate there's no agriculture possible without sufficient forests to circumscribe the fields. And cities are of course desert landscape from the ecological point of view.
I assume the little yellow blob in .de is more or less the state of Brandenburg, also known as "Germany's sandbox". Not exactly a dry area ( go a couple centuries back and much of it is swamp ) but prone to erosion without sufficient vegetation.
Didn't Einstein write to President Roosevelt asking him to do just that…?
see here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szil%C3%A1rd_letter)
In 1947 Einstein told Newsweek magazine that "had I known that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb, I would have done nothing."
[
irony tags on] Wasn't nobody there to explain Einstein that the atomic bombs have saved human lifes? [/
irony tags off]
Quote from: jseaton2311 on 2015-02-10, 13:00:16 (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=136.msg34972#msg34972)Do you really believe it was a scientist's idea to build an atomic bomb? Puuuuullllleeeeease!Didn't Einstein write to President Roosevelt asking him to do just that…?
I was certainly aware of the letter, I simply remember it as a warning to the president that the Germans were making enriched uranium and the potential of a uranium chain reaction bomb. I see now that Einstein did suggest the US begin it's own investigation into the potential of nuclear chain reactions.
So, what do you need...10 Hail Marys and 10 Our Fathers to sufficiently absolve me of my error? Must be nice sitting back guzzling booze and reading the posts here, only to chime in once in while to bust somebody's balls. How much drawing of attention away from your wife and children does all that boozing do,
Einstein? :knight: :cheers:
I reckon by 20130 the prayer mats will be everywhere. :o
18,000 years is a long time
On a prayer mat I would think 18,115 years would feel even much longer.
Water supply is an issue. While we're getting less desert in parts of the world, we are getting more in others, and crucially many of the migration patterns are into arid and semi-arid regions with high water stress.
Speaking of which: 5 mln Beijing residents drink 'southern water' (http://www.china.org.cn/environment/2015-02/12/content_34809586.htm)
About five million Beijing residents are now drinking water from a tributary of the Yangtze River, two months after a key section of China's massive south-to-north water diversion project was put into operation.
Beijing has received more than 50 million cubic meters of water from the south since Dec. 12, when water began to be routed from the central Chinese province of Hubei to the capital, said the Beijing south-to-north water diversion office on Thursday.
The first stage of this middle route -- one of three routes involved in the project -- starts at Hubei's Danjiangkou Reservoir, which stores water from the Hanjiang River, a tributary of the Yangtze River [running out in Shanghai].
A 1,432-km-long canal brings the water to China's thirsty northern regions, including the cities of Beijing and Tianjin, and the provinces of Henan and Hebei.
The amount of water flowing along the middle route is expected to increase from the current 9.5 billion cubic meters to 13 billion cubic meters by 2030.
Two out of the six water plants in Beijing are using the "southern water" as their sole source. The other plants are mixing the southern water with domestic water.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fourfutureearth.org%2Fembed%2Fnew-water%2Fimages%2F011-n.jpg&hash=62e54ef0737f0b266a0ba0bc2b1ce8be" rel="cached" data-hash="62e54ef0737f0b266a0ba0bc2b1ce8be" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://ourfutureearth.org/embed/new-water/images/011-n.jpg)
On a prayer mat I would think 18,115 years would feel even much longer.
Have you actually tried a prayer mat or a meditation cushion? Time does weird things when you get on them. A few moments may seem like a millennium, but a few millennia like a moment too - at the same time.
How much drawing of attention away from your wife and children does all that boozing do, Einstein?
"Puuuuullllleeeeease!"
That's water
over the bridge… (You've heard of extreme weather events?)
James, you know what you are; and you repeatedly show others here…
My "boozing" does help me get by.
Your
whatchamacallit helps you.
I wouldn't take that away from you.
2030 is close by: I suspect scientific understanding will (due to proponents such as you…) wane, but its influence grow. Not the actual understanding -of course- but the "scidolitry" you espouse.
My "boozing" does help me get by.
'...[to] get by'--to cope.
You need liquor to cope with life.
Regardless of the circumstances, this is not a good thing to own up to, imo Oak. And not because it is liquor, but simply because it is anything other than your own good intellectual resources. At one time I thought I could cope with life better using various escape mechanisms and all it did was lead me to depression and suicide (that's not to say this is where you are heading). I finally discovered that life does not need to be coped with generally, if one lives its parts on life's own terms. Regardless of how weak you may consider my intellectual resources to be, I am 'myr' ahead of you on this point, imho. :knight: :cheers:
By 2030, political correctness totalitarianism will be so much that people can't interact freely anymore.
By 2030, everybody, without exception, will be constantly monitored with computer systems.
By 2030, the police will start burning books.
By 2030, many of us will be already at concentration camps.
By 2030, some of us will keep fighting against 2030.
By 2030, political correctness totalitarianism will be so much that people can't interact freely anymore.
By 2030, everybody, without exception, will be constantly monitored with computer systems.
By 2030, the police will start burning books.
By 2030, many of us will be already at concentration camps.
By 2030, some of us will keep fighting against 2030.
Do you always live your life by taking things to their absolute worst possible conclusion? It certainly explains your hope and prayer of everlasting life in some supernatural paradise however. Kind of a shame that anyone has to miss out on the enjoyment of reality or the reality of enjoyment (however one chooses to slice it). Oh well....... :knight: :cheers:
Do you always live your life by taking things to their absolute worst possible conclusion?
I'm being realist, not pessimist, I just read the sign of times. You too can do it, you just don't want to and do like the ostrich, prefer to put the head into the sand so you don't see what comes to you. It's more comfortable.
We're facing dark times, really dark ones, the 2030 I described it's being prepared for some time, probably since the end of WWII.
probably since the end of WWII
How would you react, to the end of WWIII…? Because it is coming: Civilization -however you conceive it, is under assault…
There is one ultimate foe: Islamic Supremacism. There are erudite explications of the ISIS ideology; but they don't matter, and you don't care to understand them. You'd rather haggle.
I hope we (the U.S.) has an administration willing to defeat them. Noone else seems either capable or willing.
I hope we (the U.S.) has an administration willing to defeat them. Noone else seems either capable or willing.
What's the difference between ISIS and many others before or even today? they use youtube, nothing else. The youtube you created, just like the twin towers you built.
That means they studied you (the U.S. and the rest). Terror is like everything else, it can be well done or poorly done, they do it well and your fear proofs it.
A civilization afraid of videos is no civilization. Truth is embarrassing.
They use YouTube, mass murder, war crimes, sexual slavery, torture, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and yes, terror. I would agree with you that using YouTube reflects badly on them.
mass murder, war crimes, sexual slavery, torture, ethnic cleansing, genocide,
Banal, many do it. Using youtube to turn it into Terror, that's their specialty.
If people are not afraid, governments can't keep on doing more freedom restrictive measures.
That's ISIS raison d'etre.I'm afraid Oakdale that your governments is not interested at all in finishing with them, your government, europeans and many others.
As I said, 2030 is being prepared.
That means they studied you (the U.S. and the rest). Terror is like everything else, it can be well done or poorly done, they do it well and your fear proofs it.
A civilization afraid of videos is no civilization. Truth is embarrassing.
ISIS didn't study of their own initiative. U.S. govt taught them, and they turned out to be too good students. Just like with the Taliban and Al-Qaida previously, ISIS is yet another creation of the U.S. that became a costly worldwide problem.
Oakdale, have you forgotten the phase in the media when Syrian rebels were supposedly the good guys and everybody had to support them as much as possible? All focus was on bringing down Assad the tyrant. The U.S. brought down Saddam the tyrant and what came of that? Looks like the U.S is specifically calculating for more war, wanton destruction, and everlasting instability.
It's very easy to get rid of ISIS - just let Kurds create their own independent state. With independent Kurdistan at an early stage, say in the 80's, both Saddam and Assad could have been moderated without any need of killing (I'm not so sure they even needed moderation). But independent Kurdistan would obviously moderate Turkey too, so now we have to live with the Caliphate instead.
Nouns are not usually coming in superlative form, but those were nonsenseest statements.
The US neither created, nor inspired ISIL/Da'ish. They have older and better sources of inspiration. At most they have taken advantages of voids, some of which have come as a result of US action. The Assad regime is still responsible for most of the killings in Syria. The US has never supported ISIL nor al-Nusra, but have spent more resources on al-Nusra/AQ for own reasons. AQ is much more likely to make an attack on US soil or against US targets than ISIL is, and considered them the greater threat. They may still do so. Even so the US invested considerable military force and diplomacy to get Sunnis to beat ISIL up, and quite successful they were too.
ISIL is a menace to its surroundings and the territory they've conquered, not to Europe, not to the US. Sure they can be a pest here too, as shown partly in Paris and in Copenhagen when misfits claimed allegiance to ISIL in their police-assisted suicides. But the Kurds, the Yazidi, the Shia, the Assyrians, the differently-minded Sunni, they don't need YouTube to realise what they have on the doorstep. Speaking of which the Kurds, with their newly received airforce and somewhat improved weaponry, can put up a good fight in their home turf, which is a small part of ISIL territory. Outside there they are more hated than ISIL. Saddam Hussein and the Assads have killed Kurds in a quantity far beyond what ISIL can aspire to, they would if they could, but they can't.
All of which should be in the thread: What's going on in the Caliphate, and the affected neighbourhood? (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=511.0) and not in this, it doesn't have any relevance for 2030.
There are two alternatives. Either ISIL is right, the Islamic doomsday is at hand, this world is over, and Allah will spend the rest of eternity showering us all with boiling water and dressing us in flaming clothes. Or, what I would consider a slightly more likely scenario, as a Caliphate they will be defeated militarily, politically, and religiously long before 2030. You might enjoy this: What Women ISIS Really Wants (http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/)
Nouns are not usually coming in superlative form, but those were nonsenseest statements.
The US neither created, nor inspired ISIL/Da'ish. They have older and better sources of inspiration. At most they have taken advantages of voids, some of which have come as a result of US action. The Assad regime is still responsible for most of the killings in Syria. The US has never supported ISIL nor al-Nusra, but have spent more resources on al-Nusra/AQ for own reasons.
"Result of US action" is something different than "US created it"? And "spent resources on" is different from financing and support? "The US has never supported al-Nusra, they only spent resources on them..."
I agree on one thing - these are nonsense statements.
I am not familiar with the details, but the pattern is clear: US meddles, mayhem follows. US picks allies at whim and also changes them at whim. The examples of Al-Qaida and Taliban are pretty well established.
And Saddam is also an example. The US used him in the 80's to wage a long unnecessary war against Iran that did nothing except kill people. Back then he was an ally. Rumsfeld and Saddam:
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2F41.media.tumblr.com%2Fb7451a50c80b23f1243f235d9b0c4f9c%2Ftumblr_msmxpyfSBX1rncbh7o1_500.jpg&hash=7362f2b8ac0ec1c4565ad047e119269b" rel="cached" data-hash="7362f2b8ac0ec1c4565ad047e119269b" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://41.media.tumblr.com/b7451a50c80b23f1243f235d9b0c4f9c/tumblr_msmxpyfSBX1rncbh7o1_500.jpg)
The way US behaves is total nonsense. Up to and including 2030 we will only see more of the same.
All of which should be in the thread: What's going on in the Caliphate, and the affected neighbourhood? (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=511.0) and not in this, it doesn't have any relevance for 2030.
You're wrong jax, most of our threads are about nothing but about preparations for 2030.
Some can see it, other's don't.
The "New Order" is real and it goes further, much way further, than any other empire on Earth has ever gone before. Total, complete and absolute subjugation of Mankind. The only explanation for that it's their origin not being ours, something I have reluctance on accepting but evidence strikes every day...
That photo has been photoshopped! That's not Saddam, it's Mr. Howie with a Saddam head.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2F41.media.tumblr.com%2Fb7451a50c80b23f1243f235d9b0c4f9c%2Ftumblr_msmxpyfSBX1rncbh7o1_500.jpg&hash=7362f2b8ac0ec1c4565ad047e119269b" rel="cached" data-hash="7362f2b8ac0ec1c4565ad047e119269b" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://41.media.tumblr.com/b7451a50c80b23f1243f235d9b0c4f9c/tumblr_msmxpyfSBX1rncbh7o1_500.jpg)
In the year 2030, the ever-consistent and obsequious Mr. Howie will still be cottoning on about US policy, eventually compiling a book entitled, "A Treatise on American Policies" by RJ Howie.
:o
That photo has been photoshopped! That's not Saddam, it's Mr. Howie with a Saddam head.
How do you know? Is it because you are Rumsfeld?
Do you always live your life by taking things to their absolute worst possible conclusion?
I'm being realist, not pessimist, I just read the sign of times. You too can do it, you just don't want to and do like the ostrich, prefer to put the head into the sand so you don't see what comes to you. It's more comfortable.
We're facing dark times, really dark ones, the 2030 I described it's being prepared for some time, probably since the end of WWII.
Was there ever a time in history when all the signs were indicative of a rosy future for humankind? Your 'glass-half-empty' view of the future is not at all realistic, and certainly not helpful. Religious sorts have been predicting your same doomsday scenario for millennia and yet life just keeps getting better. Sure, there are the inevitable bumps (often big ones), and hard times on our journey to improve the world and human condition equally for all, but one must be quite unrealistic or simply blind to not see progress towards that end. Your resignation to the delusion of armageddon is merely
one of the many road blocks that religion imposes on the good people working hard towards building a better future for their children. I suppose that asking ya'll to keep your black thoughts to yourself is asking too much, huh? *I thought so. :knight: :cheers:
Well must say that any head would be better than the average ex-colonist one as that suggest propaganda braining. :P 8)
So, JSeaton and Belfrager argue over optimism and pessimism/realism.
I suggest a third possibility. Opportunism.
While the optimist and the pessimist argue over whether the glass of wine is half full or half empty, the opportunist rushes in and drinks the wine.....
Well must say that any head would be better than the average ex-colonist one as that suggest propaganda braining. :P 8)
What about the propaganda braining of a monarchist? How would that compare to ex-colonial propaganda?
Was there ever a time in history when all the signs were indicative of a rosy future for humankind?
I'm not concerned about rosy futures, let them come, I'm concerned about dark futures. The answer is that today you have nothing but signs that should worry you.
With an exception, universal and credible, Pope Francis.
Your resignation to the delusion of armageddon is merely one of the many road blocks that religion imposes on the good people working hard towards building a better future for their children.
The worst crimes are always committed by the "good people working hard towards building a better future for their children".
Try traveling, knowing the world opens your spirit and makes you a cult person. :)
So, JSeaton and Belfrager argue over optimism and pessimism/realism.
Not exactly, we are arguing about being used or remaining free. It turns difficult and hopeless when one has to argue about such "dilemma".
I know jax counseled against it (…and I generally appreciate jax's counsel), but I'd bring up ISIS again:
From all I've read, the U.S. has the wherewithal to decimate this incipient Caliphate — to defeat it, on its own terms. (If it can't hold its territory, it is not a Caliphate!) We do not, however, have an administration willing to do so.
And -it seems to me- the local powers are ambivalent. (They may also be incompetent, or ill-prepared. The only exception -that the U.S. would consider: Iran- is also an enemy of the West. Israel is no longer seen as an ally, being committed to its own survival…so, their "help" is necessarily eschewed.) They know they can't fight…
I realize that most Europeans reject the "conflict of civilizations" trope. But does ISIS? Do Europe's increasing Muslim immigrant populations?
The U.S. may be shielded from these considerations beyond 2030… We can wait, without undue trepidation. That is, if we're willing to see chaos once again subsume the Continent…
Needless to say, I don't believe the ideology of the Caliphate will wither and die on its own. If it is not defeated soon, and decisively, it will become a dominant force in the world.
Certainly, it will then alter any other ideas we might have about what the world of 2030 might look like.
Israel really no longer an ally? Sober up boy.
And as for the Caliphate you can proportion much of the blame on yourselves. Iraq was messed up and so too has been Syria. All falling into the usual policy of regime change which you think is some kind of right. In Iraq and Syria Christians for example got on fine but not now. When will you ever learn to keep your snout out of the business of other places? I am still laughing at that guff about Israel. as the damn place would fall apart if you suddenly stopped subsidising it's existence. That would be a difficult direction to take considering the political and financial power of Jews living in the ex-colonies.
I know jax counseled against it (…and I generally appreciate jax's counsel), but I'd bring up ISIS again:
Yes, so I replied in the proper designated area (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=511.msg35548#msg35548).
What is this world/place/forum/whatever going to be like in 2030?
Nobody knows. Anybody who says he does know is just guessing.
Armageddon might happen. Then again it might not. TEOTWAWKI has been predicted so many times that only cultists following the latest guru pay any attention to the latest predictions. Nobody really knows.
Inventions not yet thought of may be in common use then. Your guess is as good as mine on that one. We have stuff today undreamed of just a few years ago, and right now they're working on projects that just might be crazy enough to work in the near future. Driverless cars for example. Maybe the flying car is coming? Don't hold your breath, we've been supposed to have flying cars for a few decades now. Still haven't got them.
Consider that from the Wright brothers' first flight in 1903, it was within the lifespan of a man to see both that event and a man walking on the Moon. Also within that timeframe, unfortunately, the same man could see atomic weapons unleashed on civilian targets, heralding the age of nuclear war.
Right now, I approach my 60th birthday next month. 15 years from now, I'll be approaching my 75th birthday-- maybe. No guarantees at my age that I see tomorrow's sunrise of course. I don't know-- but I suppose my guess is as good as anybody's.
Maybe it will help our perspective looking forward to look backwards for a moment, 15 years back in time to the year 2000. We were all 15 years younger for one thing. Most here have moved over from My Opera. I actually started working for Opera in the year 2000, "New" My Opera (the one with the forum) opened officially September 11, 2001. We had a thread about it: IIRC most of us joined My Opera around 2003, a few a little earlier, some later, a few never were there.
So think about when you joined in My Opera in approx. 2003 (the ones that didn't will have to find a similar exercise). From 2003 to 2015 is 12 years, 12 years from now is 2027, practically 2030.
Here is a comparison of 2000 and 2010 (http://io9.com/5720871/2000-vs-2010-how-the-world-has-changed), for the most part the trends there have continued and will continue.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fi.kinja-img.com%2Fgawker-media%2Fimage%2Fupload%2Fs--c1NLB-rD--%2Fc_fit%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_80%2Cw_636%2F18lsk08m4xghajpg.jpg&hash=9fc49f2d889e2d6127969600b83c8f7b" rel="cached" data-hash="9fc49f2d889e2d6127969600b83c8f7b" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--c1NLB-rD--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/18lsk08m4xghajpg.jpg)
This is not the best, nor the fullest picture, but it gives an indication of important continuing changes. In the 1990s Europe became whole, or with a different world wiew, the Iron Curtain retreated to the Kremlin.
The trends in the 2000s, 2010s, 2020s is that the world is becoming whole, the economic curtain is shifting. In 1980 the rich side of the curtain was primarily North America and West Europe. Now it encompasses most of the Americas, most of Europe, and fast-growing areas of Asia. If this continues by 2030 that would also include most of Asia and fast-growing areas of Africa.
The technologies to let the machines take over control have improved greatly in the last 15 years. The machines will not take over yet, nor will they in 2030, but we are reaching a balance of power. Urbanisation is continuing, we have become an urban world, as can be seen from the skylines (http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/world-skylines-then-now/).
Shanghai 1996
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FSA68b.gif&hash=a4a945ae3ad110bedbe4f431188ff5f6" rel="cached" data-hash="a4a945ae3ad110bedbe4f431188ff5f6" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://i.imgur.com/SA68b.gif)
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.roughguides.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F12%2Fnew-attractions1-660x420.jpg&hash=194b75d2ffadfb7402151ba77cb1e5bf" rel="cached" data-hash="194b75d2ffadfb7402151ba77cb1e5bf" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.roughguides.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/new-attractions1-660x420.jpg)
That's a brilliant graphic. In ten years, we run into a demographic nightmare, we are totally controlled by technology, we fu*ck the entire planet but hey! aren't we entertained? :yes:
So think about when you joined in My Opera in approx. 2003 (the ones that didn't will have to find a similar exercise). From 2003 to 2015 is 12 years, 12 years from now is 2027, practically 2030.
Technologically speaking my life isn't that different compared to 10-12 years ago. I was already using Skype for video calling, I'd largely given up on television and radio via traditional distribution channels, and I looked up train times on my phone using my 2 MB bundle. I also had my e-mail and my calendar there, synced and everything. The difference is that up to as recently as perhaps 2010 that still made me somewhat unique.
It is kind of laughable for mjsmsprt40 to sipe at monarchism. The country with the mother of parliaments runs as a modern country without a written constitution that Americans fight and argue over and history shows didn't mean a damn if you were an Indian or even worse a black man. You lot have a President that operates like an ancient monarch and you run a modern imperial financial empire across the world. To ensure the money class keep their postion, hundreds of military bases all said to be to "look after American interests." What that means is wall Street barons.
During the early days of the corporate Revolution you did at one point meeting in Philadelphia your monied leaders even considered a European prince as head of State! ( :lol:). Your constitution is a waste of time as large numbers find when they get spied on by a country with more spy agencies than anyone else. It is not your fault mjsmsprt40 it is the way you are all brought up. Every classroom has a flag, every public building, many government centres have a whole phalanx of them as it it represented all the great values, principles and such. It doesn't and has become a symbol of global economic empirical things, selfish military might and an overflated nationalism cloaked in the word "patriotic."
For a country that boasts about it being a orincipled republic the actuality is something else. Rights trampled on, people persecuted internally and control freakery all for that other word 2security." An overflated military, increasingly morphing into a police state that makes the police in cities lookk like something out of some military dictatorship. Tens of millions of poor a controlled system dominated by 2 parties that keep anyone else out, spend half the world's military budget,people persecuted if they don't accept the propaganda.
Nah, you stay a Republic as you would only give monarcyy a bad name! :sing:
Nah, you stay a Republic as you would only give monarcyy a bad name! :sing: (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?action=reporttm;topic=136.99;msg=35620)
They've a King - Elvis, the Pelvis...
An American genuine King is something unimaginable. Even Presidents are. It will not change by 2030.
Yeah Belfrager and look how he ended up full of fat, drugs and lost the plot. Only emphasises my submission!
For a country that boasts about it being a orincipled republic the actuality is something else. Rights trampled on, people persecuted internally and control freakery all for that other word 2security." An overflated military, increasingly morphing into a police state that makes the police in cities lookk like something out of some military dictatorship. Tens of millions of poor a controlled system dominated by 2 parties that keep anyone else out, spend half the world's military budget,people persecuted if they don't accept the propaganda.
I just don't know what to say, so...
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fjoydanielsrealestategroup.com%2Fimage_store%2Fuploads%2F5%2F6%2F7%2F7%2F7%2Far132427108077765.jpg&hash=87a032c15f16accce4312519d858f926" rel="cached" data-hash="87a032c15f16accce4312519d858f926" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://joydanielsrealestategroup.com/image_store/uploads/5/6/7/7/7/ar132427108077765.jpg)
For those of you that still take yourselves seriously, that's the vision of 2030 from the European perspective.
Published by ESPAS - European Strategy and Policy Analysis System. Not bad. It would be interesting to compare this analysis with American ones...
http://europa.eu/espas/pdf/espas-outreach-leaflet.pdf
It's easy to read, that's just the highlights, not the full document.
The world in 2030?
The New World Order might become established by then.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FHx5gB2B.png&hash=a0ec1521399df42c323304df1cef18f5" rel="cached" data-hash="a0ec1521399df42c323304df1cef18f5" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://i.imgur.com/Hx5gB2B.png)
Great answer jimbro and well done avoiding Smiley's upset!
Great answer jimbro and well done avoiding Smiley's upset!
What?
The New World Order might become established by then.
Finally others also sees the light.
I'm certain that by 2030 the "New Order" will certainly face organized resistance against. Probably the biggest fight mankind has ever done.
It's a matter of survival of Man.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSCd9ZoOE7s[/video]
I've seen some of this posted before. Appropriate enough for a bump.
When I read of the EU's "plans" I usually think of William Tenn's short story "Brooklyn Project"… :)
I've seen some of this posted before. Appropriate enough for a bump.
Seems the fad on YouTube these days to tag every video "BBC documentary" even when they clearly aren't.
Anyway the description is accurate: "A documentary on the ten most ambitious mega-projects currently under development around the world, featuring: Dubai World Central Airport (United Arab Emirates); Songdo International Business District (South Korea); Tokyo-Osaka Maglev Train (Japan); Masdar City (United Arab Emirates); The Grand Canal (Nicaragua); National Trunk Highway System (China); International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor [ITER] - Fusion (France); World's Tallest Building (Azerbaijan); Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (India); King Abdullah Economic City (Saudi Arabia)."
A documentary on the ten most ambitious mega-projects currently under development around the world, featuring: Dubai World Central Airport (United Arab Emirates); Songdo International Business District (South Korea); Tokyo-Osaka Maglev Train (Japan); Masdar City (United Arab Emirates); The Grand Canal (Nicaragua); National Trunk Highway System (China); International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor [ITER] - Fusion (France); World's Tallest Building (Azerbaijan); Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (India); King Abdullah Economic City (Saudi Arabia).
Always the same thing, f*ck up the world.
Then they ask how's the world by 2030... better, much better indeed... how could we ever lived without a Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor...
"A documentary on the ten most ambitious mega-projects currently under development around the world, featuring: Dubai World Central Airport (United Arab Emirates); Songdo International Business District (South Korea); Tokyo-Osaka Maglev Train (Japan); Masdar City (United Arab Emirates); The Grand Canal (Nicaragua); National Trunk Highway System (China); International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor [ITER] - Fusion (France); World's Tallest Building (Azerbaijan); Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (India); King Abdullah Economic City (Saudi Arabia)."
Here is something a bit more down to earth, progressive and very green. Coming to a canal near you soon!!
First we had windmills. Then wind turbines. Now it's time to meet the Windwheel. (http://www.upworthy.com/first-we-had-windmills-then-wind-turbines-now-its-time-to-meet-the-windwheel?g=3&c=upw1)Those delightfully zany Dutch have done it again!Science will save us all folks--including ye of little faith. :knight: :cheers:
Always the same thing, f*ck up the world.
Then they ask how's the world by 2030... better, much better indeed... how could we ever lived without a Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor...
We would be living in a world where a Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor would be needed (there is serious doubt it would be built by that time) and not one where the Indian subcontinent is a poverty-stricken playground for British colonialists.
If we look at his project list, it can be divided into categories:
New Cities
- Songdo International Business District (South Korea)
- Masdar City (United Arab Emirates)
- Khazar Islands (Azerbaijan)
- King Abdullah Economic City (Saudi Arabia)
As a consequence of higher population and urbanisation in the world there will be many more cities and megacities, almost all in Asia (most of the world's population) and Africa (highest population growth). As they grow in size and economy, their impact on the world will increase, but the ones to be of influence in 2030 exist now.
Infrastructure
- Dubai World Central Airport (United Arab Emirates)
- Tokyo-Osaka Maglev Train (Japan)
- The Grand Canal (Nicaragua)
- National Trunk Highway System (China)
- Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (India)
Most of these projects would be finished by 2030 or nearby, and while there would be immediate local effects the biggest effects will take longer to materialise.
The exception would be the Chinese highway (and highspeed rail, metro, and airport) network, which is changing China as we speak.
A new Panama canal could also matter, but the change would be less dramatic as there already is a Panama canal.
Technology
- International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (France)
Whatever the outcome, it won't affect the world of 2030, but it might be of importance by 2040.
Seems the fad on YouTube these days to tag every video "BBC documentary" even when they clearly aren't.
Indeed. So much so I didn't even notice this one.
As they grow in size and economy, their impact on the world will increase, but the ones to be of influence in 2030 exist now.
In regards to planned cities - They rarely seem to of worked out as planned. I do agree with the narrator in that even a failure here can result in projects with sustainability for existing cities and given the money to do it, why not? But throwing countless dollars at an experimental city that is supposed to be much more efficient seems counter intuitive.
In regards to planned cities - They rarely seem to of worked out as planned.
Or worse, they work out as planned.
I do agree with the narrator in that even a failure here can result in projects with sustainability for existing cities and given the money to do it, why not? But throwing countless dollars at an experimental city that is supposed to be much more efficient seems counter intuitive.
There is the "our capital is a mess, let's build a pure new capital unpolluted by those people and constructed according to the latest fads". By the look of it there will be a few new Washington DCs in this century, and they usually start out miserable. Some stay that way.
Most upcoming cities now, planned or otherwise, are in areas of rapid urbanisation. Even when planners fail, these cities will fill up and the citizen are going to make it their city. They might come after the builders have gone bankrupt, but they will come eventually.
:worried: DC isn't exactly a model for how to do it.
From what I think I know of Brasilia the likelihood of these Utopian cities getting surrounded by districts full of people in no better shape than in the previous city they occupied feels self defeating.
New Cities
Infrastructure
Technology
The materialist receipt for happiness...
The materialist receipt for happiness...
I believe the official title is Saudi Prince.
Always the same thing, f*ck up the world.
Then they ask how's the world by 2030... better, much better indeed... how could we ever lived without a Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor...
We would be living in a world where a Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor would be needed (there is serious doubt it would be built by that time) and not one where the Indian subcontinent is a poverty-stricken playground for British colonialists.
If we look at his project list, it can be divided into categories:
New Cities
- Songdo International Business District (South Korea)
- Masdar City (United Arab Emirates)
- Khazar Islands (Azerbaijan)
- King Abdullah Economic City (Saudi Arabia)
As a consequence of higher population and urbanisation in the world there will be many more cities and megacities, almost all in Asia (most of the world's population) and Africa (highest population growth). As they grow in size and economy, their impact on the world will increase, but the ones to be of influence in 2030 exist now.
Infrastructure
- Dubai World Central Airport (United Arab Emirates)
- Tokyo-Osaka Maglev Train (Japan)
- The Grand Canal (Nicaragua)
- National Trunk Highway System (China)
- Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (India)
Most of these projects would be finished by 2030 or nearby, and while there would be immediate local effects the biggest effects will take longer to materialise.
The exception would be the Chinese highway (and highspeed rail, metro, and airport) network, which is changing China as we speak.
A new Panama canal could also matter, but the change would be less dramatic as there already is a Panama canal.
Technology
- International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (France)
Whatever the outcome, it won't affect the world of 2030, but it might be of importance by 2040.
Today is today and not yesteryear--punto y aparte. To the many old fogies here who started and have remained old fogies from age 30 on (look at Oakdale and ersi and Bel and Rj, etc--not Frenzie, tt92, string, smiley faze (too much), mj (too much), drake, jax and several others (who know who they are)--and jimbro is old but pretty much cool). If one can't keep an optimistic eye to the future without wishing to return to their original little comfy "nest" they came from, then they are useless to progress--kinda like Republicans. Not too many people here are optimistic about the future of humankind and it it is reflected in the choice of topics. I'm done--for now. :knight: :cheers:
The materialist receipt for happiness...
Clearly material things, infrastructure (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=334.0), cities (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=300.0), and technology is matter that matters. Cities are also the living environment for most of us, though what is classified as urban varies from small towns to megacities. From the urbane thread:
Let's start with a map over where the cities are, and where they are going.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.humanosphere.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F04%2FUrbangrowthLATimes-620x432.png&hash=cf171ba4182a4306b21091fd67ba8061" rel="cached" data-hash="cf171ba4182a4306b21091fd67ba8061" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.humanosphere.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/UrbangrowthLATimes-620x432.png)
or updated (http://qz.com/233334/almost-all-of-the-worlds-biggest-cities-will-be-in-asia-and-africa-by-2030/) for 2030:
(https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/2030_city_urban_1200.jpg)
Are the cities of the near future and how to move between them all that matters? Of course not. My contention is that most of what will occupy our minds in 2030, and all of the technology, will be apparent today. If something hasn't been invented or studied yet it won't matter in 2030 life.
Politics is a little more unpredictable. Will we have a Clinton for US President 2016-2024 and a Bush 2024-2032, or will we have a Bush 2016-2024 and a Clinton 2024-2032?
Natural disasters are more unpredictable still over such a short time interval. We know there will be some, but not when or where. Will there have been a Big One in California? Would anyone care?
Will there be any wars in 2030 that haven't begun already in 2015? Which of the current wars will have finished?
Not too many people here are optimistic about the future of humankind and it it is reflected in the choice of topics.
For some reason, you always seem ready to generalize on the basis of insufficient evidence…
Just sayin', ya know? :)
Population growth is by far the giant problem. Too many being born.
Except in Britain. Back in 1950 was a great country, the 9th largest in the world and former masters of the universe. In 2030 sluggish population growth in Britain means that it only will be the 21st largest country.
Britain was the world’s 9th most populous country in 1950. In 2050 it won’t be on the list (http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/08/daily-chart-growth-areas)
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.static-economist.com%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fimagecache%2Foriginal-size%2Fimages%2F2015%2F07%2Fblogs%2Fgraphic-detail%2F20150808_woc916_1.png&hash=0996b67710960bf4e7e611621883db57" rel="cached" data-hash="0996b67710960bf4e7e611621883db57" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-size/images/2015/07/blogs/graphic-detail/20150808_woc916_1.png)
Even in 2030 Britain will have a GDP/head higher than the world average, its position in G7 would be precarious. G7 began as the Group of five (Britain, Germany, France, USA, and Japan), but expanded as the British power slid. It was less embarrassing to add new members to create G6, G7, G8 (and back to G7 after a spat with Russia) than to kick out Britain.
Except London, which is well-set to remain a world city for most or all of this century, Britain is sliding into irrelevance. Reform of the UN is that kind of thing that takes decades rather than years, but at some point Britains grandfathered position on the Security Council will be dropped or at the very least diminished. Before 2030? Hardly likely. It is much easier to add new members than to kick the old ones out.
Ahead of Britain today (in addition to the ones shown in the graph): Ethiopia, Egypt, Vietnam, Congo, Iran, Turkey. Tanzania will be larger by 2030, Uganda, Kenya, Iraq, and Sudan by 2050.
Germany and Thailand have falling populations and will drop under UK by 2050 and 2030 respectively, based on current prognosis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_future_population_(United_Nations,_medium_fertility_variant)).
Will we have a Clinton for US President 2016-2024 and a Bush 2024-2032, or will we have a Bush 2016-2024 and a Clinton 2024-2032?
Clinton starting in 2016 and probably continuing to 2024. Only five presidents failed to be re-elected.
No Bush ever. From the WaPo: "A Quinnipiac poll...showed Bush one point behind Hillary Clinton in the state where he served two terms as a popular governor."
Great answer jimbro and well done avoiding Smiley's upset!
What?
Don't you understand English, sir?
What an answer coming from a man in a country with the modern educational short falls it has in tens of millions. Dear, oh dear.
What?
What?
Can't you understand simple Scottish?
What?
Can't you understand simple Scottish?
I can understand Scottish well enough. But, what in heck language is RJ posting in? Looks like he had trouble getting out of elementary school.
You have to understand folks that tt92 is so full of himself and thinks that giving the stupid answers he doe show how intellectual he is without taking consideration of his pomposity. n real life probably has a boring and unimportant job, is never taken much notice of so can desperately feel he is someone here in the distant world of forums. I don't actually mind if it makes him feel he is someone as we will never know hid truthful self.
On the wider note with the stuff coming from jimbro now that is a very strong blot. Being a retired teacher seems an obvious base for superior thinking but he lives in a country where the government is concerned about it's education system, where the people who have serious reading and writing matters and poor education now run into not just concerning numbers but tens of millions. So a run-of-the-mill smart alec Aussie that produces a PM like it has and an American that shuts a blind eye to suit an argument. Call and try to niggle me but neither are on a very sure footing so not a very serious bother. :P
What an answer coming from a man in a place.
Yawn.
So how do we imagine the world in 2030 to be?
You have to understand folks that tt92 is so full of himself […]. Call and try to niggle me but neither are on a very sure footing so not a very serious bother. :P
RJ, if you continue in this vein, I might retaliate…
The world by 2030 will be much better. No more Oakdale, no more jimbro. Probably, no more Belfrager... :lol:
Sorry, I'll still be around by 2030 :)
Yawn.
So how do we imagine the world in 2030 to be?
Good question.
1. D. Trump will not be, and will never have been, president of the U.S.
2. I will be dead.
3. The Middle East will be in turmoil because the oil has run out and the architectural follies that have been built with the proceeds don't earn any return.
or
3. The Middle East will be in turmoil because the world doesn't want its oil and the architectural follies that have been built in anticipation don't earn any return.
4. California will have massive solar-powered desalination plants.
5. Conspicuous consumption will have become passe.
6. Hundreds of people will be changing their names from "Kardashian" to almost anything else that is available.
7.There will be rumours of radio signals from another solar system.
More to come.......
I have given you some sound advice previously Oakdale - try and get out a bit more! Trump will get nowhere certainly but the brained will be taken in by some other clever clown and get nowhere. Such a damn shame.
6. Hundreds of people will be changing their names from "Kardashian" to almost anything else that is available.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fsmileyfaze.tk%2Fslides%2Fbigsnarl.gif&hash=cfc36ebbf22a8f74b2faad4b3fa24491" rel="cached" data-hash="cfc36ebbf22a8f74b2faad4b3fa24491" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://smileyfaze.tk/slides/bigsnarl.gif)
My car will still have a radio.
It's quite likely that I won't be here to find out.
:rip:
There will be two unrelated internets, one for education, science, and finance, and the other for teenagers and spam and scams. And forums.
There will be a rapidly-changing list of synthetic, savagely addictive drugs and their precursors available at competitive prices.
There will be an entire generation of illiterate teenagers whose only ambition will be to kill and/or die in the name of some religion.
The only people who would have the kind of mind that would appreciate art or music or culture will be too busy.
More to come.....
The only people who would have the kind of mind that would appreciate art or music or culture will be too busy.
Doing what? running away from the others?
2. I will be dead.
2030 is 15 years ahead. There are plenty of life expectancy calculators (http://gosset.wharton.upenn.edu/mortality/perl/CalcForm.html), but they give average lie expectancy and the actuary tables can be more precise than that. They should be able to predict your chances of seeing 2030, 2040 or any other year, but so far I haven't seen anyone that does.
Me, I have a >85% chance (possibly >90% chance) of seeing 2030, and a <15% (probably <10%) chance of seeing 2050.
For a guy who's 78, I look pretty good.
Car batteries and domestic batteries will be so efficient, so compact, and so quick to charge that there will be little point connecting to the grid.
The utility companies will have seen the future and will be the vendors and installers of these batteries. They will be leased, not sold. You will have a "battery I.D." which you will use to replace your car battery anywhere and to quick charge your domestic batteries via what remains of the grid or via an umbilical connection from a fleet of (battery-powered) trucks.
New health benefits will have been discovered or invented for chocolates.
Most of the world will by now wonder how anyone ever smoked tobacco.
More to come.....
And nobody will drink any form of alcohol.
McDonalds will be a thing of the past.
The world at 2030 will be just like today but with what most DnD posters desires. A nightmare.
Thankfully, I'm an exception. I'm creating my own 2030, I don't want yours.
What is the nightmare we desire? Less cars?
What is the nightmare we desire? Less cars?
Nope, more cars and more security.
To get a car you turn a working slave, for more security you sell your freedom, your soul.
I desire neither. Or rather, the type of security I desire isn't the type of security you're referring to. Is that really so different for anybody else here?
I'm creating my own 2030, I don't want yours.
You're not welcome in ours! Stay out!
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fl.thumbs.canstockphoto.com%2Fcanstock6622781.jpg&hash=21bbae261dd6cf73e428d5800af8ed6f" rel="cached" data-hash="21bbae261dd6cf73e428d5800af8ed6f" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://l.thumbs.canstockphoto.com/canstock6622781.jpg)
:jester:
Britain will have been gone in those future years having sunk below the waves due to the damn population growth.
In 14 years, no less. Britain's population is basically flat, meaning comprising a smaller and smaller share of world population, and a smaller and smaller share of world economy, and politically is reduced from hegemon to major power to minor power.
Which isn't necessarily bad. While Mr. Ferguson seems to think otherwise, there is no reason a less significant country should be worse off than a more significant country, but unless the British populace would get extremely much fatter in the years to come, their weight in 2030 would be pretty much the same as now.
Population will be flat -eh? In the 1950's ot was still around 48 million now it is into over 60 million on this island. That is ridiculous and the experts are saying it will be 70 million. May I remind you of the size of this place and there is a damn difference between 48 and 70 million on the island. Immigrants are having far bigger families, more welfare, costs to education, prisons (ate, prisons), welfare costs, public housing and so on.In 30 years time instead of buying kids prams maybe life jackets and dinghies when we sink.
Britain in 1950 had a population of 51 million, it was the 9th largest country by population on the planet.
Britain in 2016 has a population of 65 million, falling down to 22nd position, and having a tepid growth of 27% over 66 years. The prediction for 2030 is a population of 70 million and actually regaining a position to 21st (at least Britain can overcome Thailand and France in population).
The world population in 1950 was 2526 million. Today it is 7125, nearly triple the population (282%). It is predicted to be 8675 in 2030.
In other words in 1950 one out of 50 people in the world would be British. That was a small island with great clout. Today it is 1 out of 110, not even 1%. By 2030 one out of 124 would be British.
Even more dramatic is the fall of economic power. To save myself some work, I'll just quote Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_largest_historical_GDP) (quoting US Dept/Agriculture)
- The United States represented 48.69% of the world's economy in 1960 (highest point), and was at its lowest point at 21.42% in 2011.
- The European Union represented 34.6% of the world's GDP at 1980 (highest point), and was at its lowest in 1985 at 25.01%.
- China represented 1.618% of the world's economy in 1987 (lowest point), rising to 11.47% in 2012 (highest point). According to Angus Maddison, China represented 32.9% of the world's economy in 1820.
- Japan represented 17.8% of the world's economy in 1994 (highest point), after that its contribution to the world's economy has gradually diminished, and reached its lowest point in 2012 (8.32%). Although the very lowest since 1960 has been in the year 1960 when it produced 3.28% of the world's GDP.
- Germany represented 8.98% of the world's economy in 1969 (highest point), falling to 4.74% in 2012 (lowest point)
- The United Kingdom represented 6.42% of the world's economy in 1960 (highest point), falling to 3.42% in 2012 (lowest point). According to Angus Maddison the United Kingdom accounted for 9.1% of the world's economy in 1870.
- France represented 5.8% of the world's economy in 1969. After rising to 5.94% in 1974, its contribution to the world's economy fell to 3.64% in 2012 (lowest point). According to Angus Maddison France represented 6.5% of the world's economy in 1870
- Italy represented 5.11% of the world's economy in 1969. After rising to 5.18% in 1974, its contribution to the world's economy fell to 2.81% in 2012 (lowest point).
- Canada represented 2.63% of the world's economy in 1969. This figure has been generally stable, having peaked at 2.76% in 1981 and 2002, and being at its lowest (2.55%) in 1992. In 2012 Canada's share was 2.54%.
- The Soviet Union represented 14.31% of the world's economy in 1969 (highest point) and at the year of its dissolution (1991) only produced 3.58% of the world's economy (lowest point). In 2012 Russia's share was 2.82% (highest point) and reached a nadir in 1998 (1.38%) before ending up at [9]1.9% in 2010.
- India represented 3.1% of the world's economy in 1964 (highest point), and had its lowest world economy share at 1.00% in 1992. According to Angus Maddison, India represented 32.9% of the world's economy in 0 CE.
Your comment is pointless when you consider the size of this island and 70 million is gong to be damn ridiculous so all the guff about comparisons is pointless when the size of a place is more telling. We are getting over populated and the costs in everything are utterly ridiculous. The sheer cost of all those who come her and bloat things with big families are a problem. You chose to ignore the cost on housing, health, education welfare costs. So your stats mean little in hard practice.
The (American) world by 2030 will be made of 300 millions of Trump's clones.
We can see already a few ones at DnD, a world premiére.
When you consider the amount of support that man is getting it does not augur well nor for the future.
The (American) world by 2030 will be made of 300 millions of Trump's clones.
We can see already a few ones at DnD, a world.
=========
The 2030 population projection is 360 million. Following the 2016 election I'll get back to you on the number of likely Trumpites in 2030.
I suggest that we build a wall around Trump and make Mexico pay for it.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fatheistcards.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fbuild-a-wall-trump.jpg&hash=4a1ff21aa12976397a2e6f4ea585b9f2" rel="cached" data-hash="4a1ff21aa12976397a2e6f4ea585b9f2" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://atheistcards.com/wp-content/uploads/build-a-wall-trump.jpg)
It will serve nothing.
You'll need to know How to Exit the Matrix (http://billstclair.com/matrix/)
Read the first chapter, The Matrix, it's what matters.
8 predictions for the world in 2030 (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/8-predictions-for-the-world-in-2030)1. All products will have become services. (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/shopping-i-can-t-really-remember-what-that-is) “I don't own anything. I don't own a car. I don't own a house. I don't own any appliances or any clothes,”
2. There is a global price on carbon. (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/5-predictions-for-energy-in-2030) China took the lead in 2017 with a market for trading the right to emit a tonne of CO2
3. US dominance is over. We have a handful of global powers. (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/america-s-dominance-is-over) Nation states will have staged a comeback, writes Robert Muggah, Research Director at the Igarapé Institute. Instead of a single force, a handful of countries – the U.S., Russia, China, Germany, India and Japan chief among them – show semi-imperial tendencies.
4. Farewell hospital, hello home-spital (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/healthcare-in-2030-goodbye-hospital-hello-home-spital).Technology will have further disrupted disease, writes Melanie Walker, a medical doctor and World Bank advisor.
5. We are eating much less meat. (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/what-will-we-eat-in-2030) Rather like our grandparents, we will treat meat as a treat rather than a staple, writes Tim Benton, Professor of Population Ecology at the University of Leeds, UK.
6. Today’s Syrian refugees, 2030’s CEOs. (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/refugees-in-2030)Highly educated Syrian refugees will have come of age by 2030, making the case for the economic integration of those who have been forced to flee conflict.
7. The values that built the West will have been tested to breaking point. (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/democracy-checks-balances) We forget the checks and balances that bolster our democracies at our peril, writes Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch.
8. “By the 2030s, we'll be ready to move humans toward the Red Planet.” (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/by-the-2030s-well-be-ready-to-start-sending-people-to-mars)What’s more, once we get there, we’ll probably discover evidence of alien life
Nº 7 denies the six earlier predictions...
Nº 8 it's comedy, not a prediction. :)
Why? Matt Damon got there and back.
I'm tired of predictions, still waiting for the year 2000 flying cars everywhere.
Don't you remember our great baseball player Yogi Berra? He said (among other things…) "Prediction is hard… Especially about the future!"
(No Jetsons, yet? Drat! On a somewhat serious note: I'm still bemused, that we -meaning no nation- has a lunar colony… Apparently, we'd prefer to squander our minerals on inter-national confrontation!)
Bel, get used to it! (You should have already.
I'm watching television, myself: Re-runs of Peter Gunn. (It probably doesn't mean anything to you, but it was the first prime time show my mom let me stay up to watch… :) )
Don't you remember our great baseball player Yogi Berra? He said (among other things...) "Prediction is hard... Especially about the future!"
We have a football player known by the phrase "predictions? only at the end of the game..."
It seems that sport generates first class philosophers all over the world.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CygPmvRXEAAdf8X.jpg) (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/shopping-i-can-t-really-remember-what-that-is)
I sense a delay. You tweeted that weeks ago iirc? :P
No, just a condensed version of the same Danish priest and former minister (but in this one she keeps her clothes and foregoes privacy):
All products will have become services. (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/shopping-i-can-t-really-remember-what-that-is) “I don't own anything. I don't own a car. I don't own a house. I don't own any appliances or any clothes,”
But true, sometimes there has been significant delays from tweet to DnD. Then again, 2030 has been a long time coming.
We have some people here already whishing for the nightmare 2030.
Complete nightmare, with Chinese and statistics included.
(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/m7i9J3UdcHI/hqdefault.jpg)
We are now a quarter of the way from thread start to 2030. Has the progress been according to expectation? What about the future 3/4?
By that date where I live will be a mess, overcrowded and people with routine principles on issues will be so labelled and the place so in bits things will be pointless.
You must be heavily a city person. You think when the worst stench and dirt from the cities is reducing, that the world is doing okay?
Far from it. We might well be fucked if we (or perhaps more to the point, the Americans and the Chinese) don't change things around significantly. That's an entirely different question.
I was born and grew up deep in the countryside. I have had little phases here and there, but basically I live at the same spot where I was born. The forests have been drastically reduced here in the past 20 years.
So did I. The forests there have drastically increased over the past century, and I'm not talking production forests. Of course, that's not a global or even national phenomenon.
The urban effects on the countryside are global now. Maybe I am expressing myself too crudely, but I haven't seen any reliable measures of reduced pollution in the world. It's only increasing. Oil, plastics, and other poisons are not being given up - quite to the contrary. At the same time, there's a trend to present this or that pretty spot or project as "the way of the future", but it should be evident that those are just PR and marketing. All pretty spots in the world are monetised for tourism - and thus polluted.
The Pacific has been largely fished empty by industrial fishing boats. Jellyfish are overtaking the seas, and the amount of trash out there is humongous. Still a different question.
I guess that is a 3/3 to
@Frenzie so far. The forested area of Europe is growing, though that was known in 2014, so not really prognostication.
I was about to joke that it has been sustained long enough for somebody to make that a problem, and sure enough I found this (though that is more on the topic of managed forestry in the past): 'Wrong type of trees' in Europe increased global warming (https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35496350)
Trees don't really need to be planted or managed all that much. They mostly just spring up.
Trees are a different thing than a forest. Forest is an ecosystem.
Trees are the same as forest for people who think only in terms of monetisable timber. They don't think in terms of ecosystem.
No way to agree on the data, interpretation of the data, trends, or conclusions, when we don't agree on basic terms. In Estonian statistics they say that forest areas are increasing now, but this after they redefined what forest is, so whatever.
Trees are a different thing than a forest. Forest is an ecosystem
By the beginning of the twenty century we had in Portugal nine different types of original mediterranean forest, distributed by all over the country. Today, only two small areas still exist as national reserves.
Wood and paper industries destroyed all those original forests and substituted it by trees. Pine for wood and eucalyptus for paper.
The horrific fires that we had last year, killing 110 persons in two days, were a direct consequence of deforestation and plantation of mono species vast areas.
Original forests are much more fire resistant than mono species. The real problem is how to get economic value from forest. That's the way to go not keep destroying a country for the profit of a few large corporations.
Speaking of Portugal, the country with by far the most wildfires in Europe:
"A government study between 2003 and 2013 found most of the fires are started deliberately set or are due to negligence or accidents."
Trees don't really need to be planted or managed all that much. They mostly just spring up.
If it's meant as an argument that forestry does not need any management, it does not hold up. Children also largely grow by themselves, but it does not mean they grow up to be responsible citizens without didactically informed raising. And it also does not mean that we don't need any more children than we already have, that we should let exterminators loose on them.
Ecosystem is a balance in the biosphere, of the soil, plants, insects, birds and animals, air and water. Forest is not just about the trees, but about whether they provide a habitat, and whether it's a stable habitat. As the world goes on, evidently less and less people understand this. By 2030, when I am likely dead, there will be nobody to understand this.
But I do mean as part of an ecosystem. Only "managed" trees aren't. Trees naturally come last.
As the world goes on, evidently less and less people understand this. By 2030, when I am likely dead, there will be nobody to understand this.
On the contrary, this is contemporary forestry and has been for at least two decades. This isn't 1960.
has been for at least two decades. This isn't 1960
I know wood construction doesn't seem as prevalent in Europe, but as a side note - Post 1980's deforestation was mostly under control or well on its way due to better management. Ecosystem diversity was more of a 90's onward issue. Standard {soft} wood building material nowadays is called SPF. Meaning; spruce, [white] pine and fir trees. All are of similar density however promote a better ecosystem when managed together.
But I do mean as part of an ecosystem. Only "managed" trees aren't. Trees naturally come last.
I spoke about managing forestry, not trees. Trees get by without people just fine, but when foresters are in business, the business has to be managed.
This isn't 1960.
Europe is not the same in every spot. Over there you probably had pirate capitalism in 1960's. Over here it started in 1990, while 1960 was comparatively ecological paradise. And don't get me started on how Western companies behave as soon as they get their hands on something outside the borders of their home country.
Over there you probably had pirate capitalism in 1960's. Over here it started in 1990, while 1960 was comparatively ecological paradise.
I don't know if we've ever had that in the way America did and does, but with the economic surge of the '50s and '60s growth was considered more important than ecology.
I understand the Rhine, now a relatively clean river, was mostly devoid of natural life and generally to be avoided by people. Some 15-ish years ago it was on the news that salmon had moved back in — the ecological cleanse of the '90s had worked. Of course our own Rhine salmon had probably gone extinct. These were (natural) Scottish colonizers.
And don't get me started on how Western companies behave as soon as they get their hands on something outside the borders of their home country.
Indeed. :(
Speaking of Portugal, the country with by far the most wildfires in Europe:
The country with by far the most higher temperatures.
"A government study between 2003 and 2013 found most of the fires are started deliberately set or are due to negligence or accidents."
No single government ruled between 2003 and 2013. It doesn't exist such study.
Did say a wee while ago it was shame about Portugal's fire situation. Goodness nearly offered Belfrager a room here! :D
We're a little past a third of the way now.
So far the Sustainable Development Goals (https://sdg-tracker.org/) are behind schedule.
Interesting goals. Maybe the world can achieve all of them by 3030.
That's a one thousand years project. Brutal :)
More seriously, I think those goals mixes different things that would be much more effective if weren't mixed, so advancing could be faster. Dynamic generates more dynamic and that what it's needed to change the entire world.
This was the outcome of the first round, the Millennium Development Goals, set for 2015 in the year 2000:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ei8bBTOWAAEW05V?format=jpg)
So the currently envisioned future for 2030 is indeed only achievable in next millennium, if at all.
I also remember the hype in the 80's about cars of 2000, how awesomely they would change. In reality, current cars are like cars of the 80's with more electronics.
There used to be times when people were able to predict near future more accurately.
On the other hand, all the stated ecological goals are easily achieved at any point by wiping the humanity off the face of the earth. Remember that the nuclear threat has not gone anywhere. It has increased exponentially since the nuclear scare of the cold war, except that it's fallen out of the news.
Goals are goals, not predictions. ;)
Goals are goals, not predictions. ;)
Well, yeah, pardon my French. What's the other word for loudly hyped utterly failed goals?
Goals are supposed to be hard. If they are too easy they are pointless. If they are impossible they are also pointless. For the first set of goals (MDG in 2015), I think it is interesting not only if they were achieved, but how well they were (not) achieved, as they were numberical targets. 100% or above is success, 99% or below is failure.
| Target | Success rate in 2015; 100% is reached goal |
| Target 1A: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 a day | 168% |
| Target 1B: Achieve Decent Employment for Women, Men, and Young People | -5% |
| Target 1C: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger | 90% |
| Target 2A: By 2015, all children can complete a full course of Primary education/primary schooling, girls and boys | 24% |
| Target 3A: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015 | success |
| Target 4A: Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate | 78% |
| Target 5A: Reduce by three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio | 60% |
| Target 5B: Achieve, by 2015, universal access to reproductive health (pregnant women) | 26% |
| Target 5B: Achieve, by 2015, universal access to reproductive health (married women) | 20% |
| Target 6A: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS | 40% |
| Target 6B: Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it | 43% |
| Target 6C: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases (malaria) | 168% |
| Target 6C: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases (tubercolosis) | 121% |
| Target 7A: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs; reverse loss of environmental resources | partial failure |
| Target 7B: Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss | partial failure |
| Target 7C: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water | 125% |
| Target 7C: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to basic sanitation | 61% |
Goals are goals, not predictions. ;)
Well, yeah, pardon my French. What's the other word for loudly hyped utterly failed goals?
So the only utterly failed goals from the first set are 1B (employment actually went down from 2000 to 2015), and 7A/7B (failed to fully protect nature).
For the rest a significant improvement, but the set goal wasn't reached.
So the only utterly failed goals from the first set are 1B (employment actually went down from 2000 to 2015), and 7A/7B (failed to fully protect nature).
It is more like completely and utterly failed at the multiple unstated environmental goals. Unstated because they are complex and, being complex, they would actually need a table of their own with multiple metrics which are "nearly all deteriorating" as it says. Your table is just a surface scratch of mostly irrelevant goals, leaving the more important goals hidden from view.
leaving the more important goals hidden from view.
Which are?
leaving the more important goals hidden from view.
Which are?
The ecological goals, those that actually make up sustainable development. Currently the table displays mostly socio-economic goals, more to do with quality of life for humans, less to do with sustainability.
The ecological goals, those that actually make up sustainable development. Those in front view in the table are mostly socio-economic goals, more to do with quality of life for humans, less to do with sustainability.
Exactly. I would be more effective if those two areas were separated: focus in achieving one first, the other after it.
Anyway, I prefer the ethics (https://permacultureprinciples.com/ethics/) of permaculture: Earth care, People care and Share the surplus, achieved by aplying the twelve permaculture's principles (https://permacultureprinciples.com/principles/).
This thread has now crossed a half-way point. It was created 2014-01-24. Today is 2022-11-01, 3203 days later (or the thread was created 8 years, 9 months, 8 days ago).
2030-01-01 will come in 7 years, 2 months (or in 2618 days).
Going back to the original Opera forum, it was created 2001-09-11, 7721 days ago. 7721 days from now will be the date 2043-12-22 (https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/2043).
And to answer the burning question in topic start, we seem to have reached (at least temporarily) peak beer (https://twitter.com/jaxroam/status/1587382353424433152) in 2013. Higher likelihood of less beer than more beer, but not definitive yet.(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FgeCV3vXoAUJpC4?format=png)
Looking up the original predictions, the link rot has spread widely.
It seems time to repost the reminder (http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?id=14217132) from the original thread. It had a lot about Muslims, Vivaldi is still running on beer (https://vivaldi.net/forum/debates/204-the-world-in-2030), and this thread has taken an environmental turn. All fine, but it should be about the world starting 15 years 11 months and 3 days from now.
Opera forums are partially covered by the Web Archive, including this thread (https://web.archive.org/web/20131108190510/http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=1653432&t=1383937509&page=1#comment14217132). The newer Vivaldi threads are not, so the Vivaldi 2030 thread seems gone. This one is still here of course.
Saw there a group I had completely forgotten about, with reason it seems,
The Next Eleven.
The Next Eleven (known also by the numeronym (https://web.archive.org/web/20131109033749/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeronym) N-11) are the eleven countries – Bangladesh (https://web.archive.org/web/20131109033749/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh), Egypt (https://web.archive.org/web/20131109033749/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt), Indonesia (https://web.archive.org/web/20131109033749/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia), Iran (https://web.archive.org/web/20131109033749/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran), Mexico (https://web.archive.org/web/20131109033749/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico), Nigeria (https://web.archive.org/web/20131109033749/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigeria), Pakistan (https://web.archive.org/web/20131109033749/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan), Philippines (https://web.archive.org/web/20131109033749/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippines), Turkey (https://web.archive.org/web/20131109033749/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey), South Korea (https://web.archive.org/web/20131109033749/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea), and Vietnam (https://web.archive.org/web/20131109033749/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam)
The ones that could be said to have done reasonably well are Bangladesh, Indonesia, South Korea and especially Vietnam. Rest middling or worse.