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Originally Posted by octothorp
I disagree with the cyclical nature. Yeah, ice-ages have wiped out civilizations, but it's also been a major driver of technological development. The paleolithic ice age, for example, was a period of intense technological progress, in part because of periods of extreme climate change (ice-ages) forced humans to develop technologies that would allow them to adapt to climate change. It's widely speculated that fire-usage became common during the ice-ages of the middle paleolithic. In a relatively static, comfortable environment that experienced no food shortage or climate change, it's arguable that it would have taken for longer for fire and tool usage to spread.
An extreme climate change event right now would potentially kill millions, alter societies and politics on a global scale, but it could very well drive technological innovations that increase the likelihood of us surviving not only on our own planet but also outside our goldilocks zone. We might emerge from such an event as a far more focused and efficient civilization that has the technologies that would allow us to start to look seriously at colonization within the solar system.
In the case of extraterrestrial civilizations, this is really what's important: not how long it takes them to develop long-distance space travel, but how long it takes them to develop the technologies to function outside their own goldilocks zone.
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This reminds me of a book I read years ago, "The Ingenuity Gap" by Thomas Homer-Dixon.. At the time it was pretty illuminating for me and I think it's still pretty relevent. He talks a lot about the growing complexity of society (techologically, economically etc) leading to complex issues (climate change, international financial crises...) and how humanity historically has consistently been capable of amazing "ingenuity" to overcome these issues. Speculating to some degree that we are nearing a time where the gap between our capabilities and the scope of the issues we are creating is becoming disturbingly large.
Hawking himself thinks we've done irrepairable damage to our planet... That scares the bejeezus out of me.