|
I'll answer the questions in order: 1: If humans lost all technology today, the vast majority of them would die off within a month, because only modern, high-energy farming can get enough food out of the ground to feed them. However, this high-energy farming is only possible because of oil, which not only transports the food, but provides the pesticides without which insects would be eating instead of humans. (Another finite, nonrenewable natural resource with no possible substitute provides fertilizer, without which our food wouldn't even grow). 2: Because, like other species before them, humans are destined to exhaust the resources on which they depend. 3: Nothing has been created (IOW, entropy has not decreased, and matter and energy are still conserved)-- we're merely better at transforming matter and energy than we used to be. 4: Before our developed energy resources were built, they existed as undeveloped energy resources and raw materials. For example, oil drills are made of steel from the ground, not steel magicked into existence, and they are built to remove oil from the ground, not to create oil out of thoughts. 4a: Since the aforementioned resources are finite, they are most certainly running out. The only scientific theory on the timing was formulated by one M. King Hubbert in the 1950s. 4c: General entropy is irrelevant. We're still over a trillion years away from seeing the entire universe burn out. The entropy of this planet, WRT its ability to sustain an ever-increasing human population, is increasing rapidly, as evidenced by global warming, desertification, deforestation, and other very obvious symptoms. 5: Yes, humans are running out of general resources (because they are finite) to transform into security-enhancing resources. No, humans are not running out of chaos, they are creating plenty of it: Polluted drinking water, fishless oceans, coalless coal mines, a toxic atmosphere, and dry oil fields (among other things) are all perfectly useless to our security. Eventually, there isn't going to be anything left but rocks and mud, and then the situation I described in (1) above will exist. 5a: 100,000 years is not a long time compared to the length of the history of life on Earth. There have been other species that lasted longer, but are gone today. |
Entropy on Earth has been decreasing for billions of years. The 2nd law of thermodynamics only applies to a closed system.