Posts: 3,987
Name: Abel Mohler
Location: Asheville, North Carolina USA
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Wow, this thread is still going? I thought it would be pushed to page 2 by now for sure. I had time for a whole vacation and then some....
Anyway, in all seriousness, I don't think we will be wiped off the face of this earth in the next 700 years. Life will undergo serious changes, to be sure. There will be much new technology, but that is very difficult to predict. We obviously won't be able to rely on oil as much as we do now, though using crops for fuel isn't sustainable either.
In the future, energy production will become dependent on things like fusion (of hydrogen isotopes, an immensely abundant resource). Also, space-based solar power is something that's already being developed by the Japanese. If we can generate enough power with renewable or abundant resources, and recycle enough metals and plastics, we'll be able to sustain a technological society for thousands of years.
We're still not certain how much oil is left on earth. Also, technology might be invented that makes extracting oil from shale economically practical. Shale is a very abundant resource, but extracting oil from it is not economical yet.
Using gas emissions from landfills is already happening now, to generate power. This will definitely happen on a larger scale in our lifetimes, as it turns out to be pretty easy to do.
In short, mankind isn't going anywhere. Hopefully we don't turn out to be like the future of society portrayed in the movie " Idiocracy"...
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