> [Hunger] stones were embedded into a river during droughts to mark the water level as a warning to future generations that they will have to endure famine-related hardships if the water sinks to this level again.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longtermism Longtermism is an ethical stance which gives priority to improving the long-term future. It is an important concept in effective altruism and serves as a primary motivation for efforts to reduce existential risks to humanity.
since the villagers is essentially trying to communicate over long period of times critical information that would essentially be of no use to them in their lifetimes, but would save lives many years down the track.
There's a huge difference between "communicates with" as in the article and "gives priority to" in longtermism. The latter justifies all kinds of horrors in the present because they could lead to future prosperity.
There is an issue in such approach: people do not see them except during a drought so... Not very useful.
The real issue is that domestically we can store water if we live at a not that high density. We can collect even 50-100m³ underground per home, out of rain water on the roof, make it drinkable with sand filters + Cl, potentially a not so cheap home can store enough water for its residents on yearly basis. Agriculture can't. Industry can't. We actually need to eat, so we need agriculture (also to farm animals, since they also eat), and since we do not build anything forever and ever and we evolve we need industry.
What would it take to increase the likelihood of rain synthetically?
I know many are adverse to geo-engineering, but lets say i can predict the winds for the next days, i have a ocean, i have solar and ultrasonic humidifier , wouldnt it be feasable to basically create dense fog - cloud coverage from nothing that is then carried inlands were it rains down near mountain ranges?
You take one of the armies floating solar arrays, add the humidifiers and voila ready is a terra forming experiment never tried before.
So your BATNA here is going to be irrigation canals. Can you make rain cheaper than you can dig, maintain and fill irrigation canals? Amortized over X years?
Clouds and rain occur when dust and airborne micro-organisms serve as crystalization sites for water vapor.
There's actually a positive feedback loop where the more life there is (in, for instance, a rain forest), the more rain occurs there, as plants emit various pollens and atomized oils into the air.
Similarly, if you destroy ecosystems and decimate biomass, there is nothing in the air for water vapor to glom onto and you will soon have a desert.
I have an ongoing disagreement with a good friend that the drought in Lion King was caused by Scar's poor ecosystem management, she insists it was coincidence.
The University of Colorado has a research group that has been working on evaluating the efficacy of cloud seeding to increase winter snowpack in mountains. Here's one of their papers: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1917204117
> What would it take to increase the likelihood of rain synthetically?
At this point, the issue isn't just likelihood of rain, but a cataclysmic shift in climate conditions, which we knowingly cause, and against which we don't want to act. It's not simply about favoring long term over short term, our society has effectively become a death cult, even on the short term.
There's a difference between some people living in hard places supported by outside help, and whose ecosystem has had long durations to adapt, and many people seeing their normal weather change extremely quickly and their ecosystem stressed at incredible rates.
Just curious, Australia being mostly desert, if the rest of the planet became similarly barren, would it still work out? I don't know how food-independent Australia is...
With a maximum estimated population of a few millions living on 7 million square kilometers, that's not really a great path to follow for Earth's current 8 billion inhabitants sharing about 150 million square kilometers.
> [Hunger] stones were embedded into a river during droughts to mark the water level as a warning to future generations that they will have to endure famine-related hardships if the water sinks to this level again.