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C00002 00002	techno[f82,jmc]		The scientific basis for technological optimism
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techno[f82,jmc]		The scientific basis for technological optimism

1. Even if the energy requirement for the extraction of ores goes up
by a factor proportional to dilution, we can afford it.
Clobber the entropy arguments.

2. Crackpots and crackpotism
Classify motives. power.  Holdren and other renegade scientists.
Journalists.  Politicians.

3. Energy.  Even solar will work.

4. Population.  We will feel too crowded before we starve.

5. Space.  We need to move before the sun moves off the main sequence.

6. Most likely civilization will die because of the heat death but not
before.  Civilization should take the attitude toward this event that
a person takes toward his own death.  Gloom about the heat death, however,
is like asking a baby to be gloomy
during the first second of his life
 about his eventual aging and death.

7. Pollution

The seven major scares.

8. Social dangers.

9. Why people aren't grateful about not getting tuberculosis.  They
won't be grateful about not getting cancer either.