Peak Oil: A View from Planet Talos (Nate Hagens)

  Nate Hagens -- Oil Drum

  This is a guest post from First Talosian, the senior member of the planetary expedition force from Talos. I am posting the correspondence as we received it, unedited. (there are spelling and grammatical errors). In it he describes his culture's perspectives on Earth's history and future with particular emphasis on our energy and ecological intersections. The graphics were not part of his letter but added by me. 

  Nov. 3, 2006 -- Greetings to all Homo sapiens and any others on Earth who can understand this.

Our Planet Talos (very far away)

   We continue space-travel to different galaxies to experience new sights and experiences, the memories and quandaries of which then circulate in our minds for millenia like a hundred sided rubicks toy cube. Otherwise we get bored quite easily and experience mental decay. Sadly, the females of our race died out 20 million years ago so we cannot reproduce. However, our scientists (in particular a genius even by Talos standards named Cornelius), discovered how to regenerate neurons with virtually no thermodynamic loss, thereby stopping aging almost completely. There are now 1,752 Talosians left, and for all purposes we are immortal on your human time scale. Too, we bleed and laugh and experience joy and pain just like we observe you do. A bullet or a bite from a jandar would be just as deadly for us. But we are cautious. Now let me continue.

   This is my 19th visit to your blue planet. My first trip here was in your year 4,529,665,520, which was just before the asteroid impact that removed the large mammals and well before the primate line began from the morphological isolation of a tarsier colony. But most of my visits have been in the last 2 million years, and this is my 11th trip in a row (110,000 earth years). On my last visit here 10,000 years ago, there were only about 1 million hominids on the planet- in a fraction of earths history your population has increased 65,000 fold. In fact, half of all homo sapiens ever to be born are alive today. Let me continue. (human: insert graphics here)

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