Also, to kick it up a notch, consider the alternative: do you really think that, say, the US Congress or Presidency is going to take any bold decisive action that's going to positively address these long term concerns?
No, but I'd like to see some hard analysis showing that these concerns are actually valid and, even if they are, that less radical alternatives have been considered before huge amounts of resources are devoted to such radical and expensive ideas.
The Earth's crust is very large, and this wouldn't be the first time that natural resource limitations have been blown out of proportion because people couldn't see relatively near term technological or organizational solutions to them.
Consider these two cases : fossil fuels and Solyndra. In the first case the experts have been saying for decades (at least since the Arab oil embargo of 1973, but maybe before, since my memories don't go back farther) that the planet will soon run out of fossil fuels. Now this is true for some definition of soon but based on what I was hearing 30 years ago I never would have expected US oil production to be growing in 2010.
The Solyndra case is an example of an unsuccessful business decision being based on the assumption that a resource (refined silicon) that is scarce at time t would remain scarce at time t + <a few years>.
Now of course hindsight is 20/20 and I'm not saying I could have predicted the development of fracking 30 years ago or Chinese improvements in silicon processing technology 5 years ago but sometimes keeping in mind some really simple ideas can help to keep perspective. For instance when someone says natural resources are scarce so maybe we should mine asteroids I tend to think, "... but the Earth's crust is really big, hmm...". Or when someone says refined silicon is really expensive so we can make a lot of money using this new technology for making solar cells, I tend to think, "...refined silicon == sand + X, now why is X so expensive and can something be done about it, hmm, ...".
I've actually often wondered why billionaires haven't invested their money in truly world changing ideas (being able to do that has always seemed to me to be the only meaningful motivation for becoming a billionaire) but there are so many technologies that could radically transform the world and human existence in the next 20-50 years that I think mining asteroids can and should wait.
No, but I'd like to see some hard analysis showing that these concerns are actually valid and, even if they are, that less radical alternatives have been considered before huge amounts of resources are devoted to such radical and expensive ideas.
The Earth's crust is very large, and this wouldn't be the first time that natural resource limitations have been blown out of proportion because people couldn't see relatively near term technological or organizational solutions to them.
Consider these two cases : fossil fuels and Solyndra. In the first case the experts have been saying for decades (at least since the Arab oil embargo of 1973, but maybe before, since my memories don't go back farther) that the planet will soon run out of fossil fuels. Now this is true for some definition of soon but based on what I was hearing 30 years ago I never would have expected US oil production to be growing in 2010.
The Solyndra case is an example of an unsuccessful business decision being based on the assumption that a resource (refined silicon) that is scarce at time t would remain scarce at time t + <a few years>.
Now of course hindsight is 20/20 and I'm not saying I could have predicted the development of fracking 30 years ago or Chinese improvements in silicon processing technology 5 years ago but sometimes keeping in mind some really simple ideas can help to keep perspective. For instance when someone says natural resources are scarce so maybe we should mine asteroids I tend to think, "... but the Earth's crust is really big, hmm...". Or when someone says refined silicon is really expensive so we can make a lot of money using this new technology for making solar cells, I tend to think, "...refined silicon == sand + X, now why is X so expensive and can something be done about it, hmm, ...".
I've actually often wondered why billionaires haven't invested their money in truly world changing ideas (being able to do that has always seemed to me to be the only meaningful motivation for becoming a billionaire) but there are so many technologies that could radically transform the world and human existence in the next 20-50 years that I think mining asteroids can and should wait.