alt Hacker News>like we've screwed ourselves with not just the air but the ground we stand on too
I'm reminded of something Margaret Atwood once said which boiled down to the fact that there is no starting civilization over, ever again, if we fall back into the Dark Ages. the metals for copper tools and iron-making are in forms that require a lot of technology to even re-smelt, and all the easily accessible mines that don't require heavy machinery and engineering are long mined out
we either get it right this time around or it's over for us
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If you ignore all the metal every place around everywhere, then yeah it's harder to get to.
I have to believe we would be able to make due with the available mountains of metal that is already in use in things?
> I'm reminded of something Margaret Atwood once said which boiled down to the fact that there is no starting civilization over, ever again, if we fall back into the Dark Ages. the metals for copper tools and iron-making are in forms that require a lot of technology to even re-smelt, and all the easily accessible mines that don't require heavy machinery and engineering are long mined out
> we either get it right this time around or it's over for us
Space, the final frontier.. *cue intro music
On the other hand, it's kind of reassuring that if we cock it up bad enough this time around, we won't be given the opportunity to make the same mistakes a second time?
Eh, not really. Any large scale dump will contain riches - in both accessible energy sources, like burnable and melt able plastics and other materials and metals - that it dwarfs whatever was available to any pre-industrial society.
We might have a pretty rough time dealing, but we’ve got a lot of wealth accumulated above ground now, and we’d have plenty of chances to make a go at it.
Why are taking sci-fi authors seriously? They are entertainments, nothing more.