So, I was wondering, has there been any info in SR canon about global warming. It is a serious issue of these days, and I suppose it still would be, even more so, after 50 years from now? There has been info about rainforests and nature re-vitalized through magic, but I don't remember reading anything about mages cooling this planet.

And the other one I was wondering, which I guess loosely connects to this, is the issue of flying cars, as I remember reading something about flying cars being the reality in SR in 2070. If I remember wrongly please just ignore this. The thing about flying cars, however, is something that I can't just imagine, the mechanics I mean. How is it going to be possible to make economical flying cars AND makin them work so that they can be used in urban, crowded areas, without bystanders being burned as is the case with T-Birds.

General environmental chaos has occured, although thanks to our advanced technology and the fact that most food is now grown under artificial conditions, we've largely overcome those problems (overcome as in the wealthy still get good food and have nice vacation spots). After the awakening, large tracts of land were reclaimed by nature, however.

Aye, between the drastic reduction in golbal popluation (yay VITIS) and the planet taking back rather large portions of it self, I think golbal warming might have stopped by then.

What was the total population decline in percent by the way?

I would be shocked if there are less than 5.5 billion people on earth. I would also shocked if there were more than 7 billion. I large play as if the plauges and shit jut kept the numbers around the same level.

To be honest, even with a severe population decline, I'd be shocked at less than 7 billion. Humans tend to breed fast when their population starts to drop, and I can see metahumans inheriting that. Worse is the species with longer lifespans, plus the people who are effectively immortal, thrown in the mix.

Basically, I can see an easy 8 billion by 2060 with no effort, even with all of the problems they have. We've already proven we can get increase our population by 50% in less than a decade without problems like that cropping up.

I don't think the big issue with flying cars is going to be one of technology.

We could make them today if we wanted, and probably have them fueled off of nothing but pure water (we've already got engines that do that - just we refuse to market them) with 100% clean output.

The problem is going to be one of air traffic control. Traffic has enough issues letting anybody who can scam the DMV drive in 2D. Put a bunch of drunk frat boys into 3D and traffic will be unmanagable. I suspect this is why they have so many rules over flying vehicles already. Bump the number of things flying around the New York skyline by 10 million and you know you will have issues...

ATC is one of the big hold ups for Moller at this point. FAA just doesn't know how to classify it couple that with that it will take a huge chunk out of airline ticket sales for the smaller companies, hurting the economy.

There are no enviromental problems in the shadowrun world.

Some tree huger cry babies start protesting your proper utilization of resorces, you just hire a Shadowrun team and Bang! no pesky protesters.

The government tryes to get you on some silly regulations about emisions, another team, some incriminating photos of senators with underaged cat-girls, and poof! no emision problems.

An investagative reporter wants to run a story about your "Rape of the Earth"? Eather: A, they work for you and HR can take care of them. ("Early retirement"). or B, they work for another megacorp. Mearly inquire about the health of there family, they should get the hint.

You see, the enviroment is doing great, and Mr Megacorp is doing his best to watch out for you, your family, and the future. (insert corny 1950's industral promitional film music here)

Actually, I'd think that flying cars would at least be available by the 2060s.

After all, small personal aircraft have been around for quite some time; I'm talking about single-person miniature helicopters and ultralight aircraft, though--not Cessna 172s and the like.

And besides, there are at least three amphibious motor vehicles being manufactured right now--two are cars, the third is a motorhome.

--Foreigner

Funny, their last report on the website says they've had numerous successful, tethered (as required by the FAA) flights for the last few years. Where did you hear about the failed attempt?

I didn't say it was a failed attempt. I said they got it 5 feet off the ground without a pilot. They couldn't get it to go any higher. Let alone add a 200 pound man to it.

I watched the video on their website. They call it a success, I call it a failure. Of course if they called it a failure they would lose funding. My point is, they don't have a vehicle that can fly. They have a vehicle that can hover.

Lets not even talk about the amount of fuel they need for those 30 second successes. If you watch the video you can see the fuel line attached. The vehicle runs of an external fuel tank, the added weight of an onboard one keeps it grounded.

Some 'success'.

The flying car concepts they're looking at now all make heavy use of automation - you don't fly it so much as tell it where to go. Air traffic control would be a nightmare if there were a lot of them and also around airports and helipads, though. Really, it's hard to see a lot of these in 2070 because there pretty much aren't any in 2064. That's six years for a technology roll out - not enough for something big and infrastructure heavy like that (with high switch costs to boot).\

I run my game with a fair amount of global warming - a lot of hot and muggy weather in Seattle. Don't forget hard rain, either. My players buy chemsuits and respirators just to go outside on the bad days.

Check out How Stuff Works for some info on Flying Cars.

As a side note, as a GM i incorporate flying cars in Shadowrun. With all the tech advancements available, it's silly not to. BUT I treat them like toys for the rich and famous. And they are rare due to fuel consumption, cost and logistics.

As a player, I once made a character with a two seater flying car made Via rigger 3. it was cheap to build, but it was a short range fuel hog.

I had a player make a flying surfboard. Completly within the rules. He built it on a drone fuselage. I forget if it was body 0 or 1. I have heard of some other crazy stuff, like jet packs and flying gloves.

There's another source: Thermal Depolymerization, or TDP for short. It can convert almost anything organic into long-chain hydrocarbons, in theory. Currently, the research is focused on making the process more economical; but with gas prices skyrocketing, even if it takes $55 to make a barrel of light, sweet crude using TDP, it'll be more cost-efficient than traditional pumped oil.

I have heard (a friend read a book partly about the following) that a large part of the reason plastic is so cheap and thus so prevalent is that we use so much gasoline & fuel oil. The plastic is made out of the longest chain hydrocarbons which would otherwise be toxic waste and have to be further processed somehow (probably they could still be burned, just less efficiently). Happens that one thing we can process it into is plastic. So if we reduce gas & oil burning we will simultaneously and automatically reduce our use of plastic in some proportion.

This is Dumpshock. The winner of the Sunshine and Rainbows competition will be awarded the prize atop a heap of bodies.

~J

Well, yeah. But it'd be a shame if you got to the top and saw all them bodies and was like, "Heavens! All my friends are corpses!" and were actually *surprised* by it.

You know I come here to talk about shadowrun, not get pushed people's ideas about politics, religion, or how they should eat. My response was to his.

If I said, "we should force everyone to be Catholic becasue its smart" people would flip. And they would be in their right. Keep your politics out of my Shadowrun, this isn't Reeses.

@Adarael,

you have to have me confused with someone else. I have my bad mood days, but I am one of the nicer people on the board.

The problem with cutting down on meat production is simple nutrition. It is possible to make up for the lost protien, fats, and minerals. However, it takes a great deal of effort to do so. Between careful diet management and actually following the food pyramid, the latter is much easier than the former.

Personally, I say just move all farming out into outer space. This would be good for Earth's enviroment and allow the production of enough meat to support everyone. After the multi-trillion dollar investment of actually building farming communities in outer space and shipping up all of the livestock, that is.


As for global warming, I say it will keep going untill it stops on its own. The thing about global warming is that there is absolutly no evidence that suggest that human activities contribute to global warming in any significant manner. It is far more probable that so called global warming is just a part of the Earth's natural temperature cycle.

Hover test
That is the most current video, still from a few years ago. Note, no fuel line connected. Note, more than 5 feet, more like 15 to 20. Note, it's listed as a hover test, hence why it's not zipping around. The line you can make out at the end as it settles down it the tether required by the FAA for the testing, nothing else.

And VatMeat gets closer to reality:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4148164.stm

Get rid of the ranches if you want to, but you don't have to go vegan if you go green. Mmm. Cloned, vat-grown meat.

Hey, if you vat-grew human meat, would it be cannibalism if you chowed on it? And could ghouls be sustained by it?

VatMeat - Yum Yum. So much better than Soy. I think that SR's official canon needs to get with the pace of real tech. (Or at least, update again. What they thought was probably gonna be the primary food in 1989 is looking more like cheap ink and sauce in 2005. )


And about energy in autos and such - Solar energy is probably the best you could shoot for. The problems, however, lie in:

A: Harvesting it in enough quantity. Ideally, we'd pull a Dyson Sphere scenario. Failing that, we can set up mucking huge networks of solar-collecting satelites around the moon or something. But that raises problem B early.

B: Distributing it. While it's true that current power lines don't give a drek whether the electricity they conduct comes from the pure-yellow-sun, black-as-ass coal, neon-green nukes, or something else entirely, we have to get it into cars. If we go with the space collector idea, we also face the challenge of getting it down to earth. (Maybe make a space elevator that, instead of being used as an elevator cable, is a gigantic power conduit?)
Then, the problem is getting it into a portable form - we'd need truely high capacity capacitors. SR 'solves' this problem with the Grid, but has anyone ever thought about the inherant unsafeness of that much juice running just under the pavement? I don't think it ever actually says how the power gets into your car from the Grid - is it like, arcing between the ground and the underside of your auto? Collection strips on the tires? What?

C: Using it with an efficiency to rival petrochems. Let's face it. We all want voom voom. Especially when you're in a trade where your life and death may depend on your ride's ability to squeeze out 10 more KpH than the 'Star. To be truely acceptable, electric cars must:
A: Offer the convienance of gasoline. Nobody has four hours to wait at the pump while their ride gets juiced. You need to plug an' chug, and chug fast.
B: Offer an efficiency comparable to that of gasoline. You put the foot on the pedal, and you need to GO. Most people won't give a hoop if that GO is the form of a high pitched whine or the roaring rumble of a Hemi. (Me, I'm funny. If my car dosen't rumble, I don't feel like it's really going. )
C: Offer an economy comparable to gas. Even if you can do 0 - 60 in 3.8 seconds and your car fills it's batteries in two mintues time, it's still not very useful if you have to recharge it every few hours.

So to summarize: We have all the energy we could ever possibly need. It's that huge glowin' thing, most Shadowrunners consider it a vauge childhood memory, if that. The problems are
A: Harvesting it.
B: Getting it to us.
C: Using it properly.


And I'm rambling, aren't I?

Nokola Tesla was working on a method of wireless energy transmission before his death. Unfortunatly, a lack of funding kept him from completing is work.
If someone could get Tesla's trdient energy transmitter to actually work, it would solve most energy traansmission and storage problems.

There is no need for gasoline when power is simply broadcasted to your car.