posted
In a discussion here earlier it was suggested that Environmental issues such as Global Warming were not to be worried about. God would handle it.
At first I thought such arguments were the simple rationalization of the greedy or the needy. If you have millions invested in a power plant, or if you work for that power plant, or if you need the cheap energy that power plant produces, its easy to think "don't worry about its global warming problems. God wouldn't let us make such a mistake."
Listening to the discussion I realized that this argument goes deeper. The idea is that the world's ecosystem is something much to big for one person, or all persons to be able to effect. By its size, it is only changed by God on high. Whether we drive our oversized SUV to the mail box or we use super dim energy saving light bulbs really doesn't matter in the greater scheme of things.
Yesterday my mother reminded me of a little story.
Back in '93 there was a nice old man living along the river. He was a good Christian soul, with a long family history of good Christian prayer and works and thoughts. He feared God. He loved Jesus. He raised his family and his friends to do the same.
One spring day he sat in his old rocking chair, listening with interest as the weatherman came on TV. "Flood!" he said. "The river's coming up and we don't know when its gonna stop. The Governor is calling for an immiediate evacuation of everyone in the 100 year flood plain. Its a whopper folks. Get out. Now."
As the weatherman went on talking about the melting snows to the north and the storms coming from the west and the rain that came over the last two weeks, this old man looked around him. He looked at the mementos that filled the room. Pictures of his grown kids, two now with ministries of their own, and one serving in the Marines. He looked at the couch, covered with the afghan his late wife had made. He looked at the last 60 years of his life and the comfortable, prosperous home he had. Then her reached for his family bible, the one that had been in his family for going on 200 years, and he clutched it tight.
"Rufus" he called to his dog. "I am a good Christian. I have dedicated my life to God over 65 years ago, and I haven't turned back once. I place my faith in him. God won't turn his back on us. I'm staying."
And the water rose.
It rose over his family fields and into his families barn.
The chicken and the cows that didn't drown headed for the higher ground.
It rose over the car and over the tractors and over porch and through the house.
It washed away the corn and the wheat. It washed away the pictures and the memento's of a good life. It washed away the rocking chair and the TV and the weatherman's warning.
Up on the second floor, watching his world sink, the old man clung to Rufus and to his bible and prayed.
A boat pulled up. Two sherrif's deputies called out to him. "Come. Hurry. We can't keep this boat here long. You have to leave."
The old man looked at his house. He was on the second floor, the floor where he shared his bed with his wife for 40 years, until Jesus called her away. It was the floor where his children were born, and where they grew up and where they found Jesus. There was the sewing room, once belonging to the oldest boys, but his wife redecorated after they went away. He hadn't been in there since she passed on. It was all he knew.
He looked at the bible in his hand.
"Go Away!" he yelled to the deputies. "I am a good Christian. My faith is strong. God will not forsake me. He will not let me come to harm."
A wave came and washed the boat away, but not before Rufus jumped into it. Rufus looked back at his old master with sad and confused eyes.
And the water rose.
Higher it came, and higher still.
The water washed away the old oak tree that his grand kids play on when they come to visit, and that his kids played on when they were young, and that he had played on when he was young.
It washed away the marital bed and the sewing room, the children's rooms and the steps.
Desparatly the old man climbed up onto the roof. There, beneath the rain filled clouds the old man held his bible and prayed.
A bright light peirced the dark night and the sound of devilish laughter seemed to fill the air. Slowly it dawned on the old man that he was really seeing a helicopter cut through the storm. From the speakers on the copter a voice rang out, "We are here to save you. Grab the rope and we'll pull you up."
The old man looked at the roof of his house, and felt it shudder each time the current brought a tree or car or trash to crash into it. He thought of all he had lost, and all the river had washed away. It did not make him sad. It made him stubborn. He raised the family bible high. "I am a good Christian. Jesus loves me. He will not forsake me. He will not let drown. He will rescue me!"
Three more times the crew of the helicopter tried to convince the old man to grab the rope. Three more times the old man refused.
And the river rose.
With a loud groan the house rose from its foundations and was washed away.
With it went the family bible.
With it went the body of the dear old man.
Later, in heaven, the dear old man meets God.
"Why," he asks, "Why did you forsake me?"
"Forsake you?" asks God. "I did not forsake you. I sent you the weatherman, the deputy boat and the helicopter. You were just to stubborn to listen."
I wonder, how many of us are comfortable in our rocking chairs, looking at our things and our loved ones and comfort and ignoring those messages God sends that seem a bit inconvienent.
Especially if those messages come in the form of scientific reports on global warming.
If we so easilly ignore the weatherman, will we ignore the rescue boats? Will we refuse the helicopter?
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
That is the best version of that story I've read. You just can't ignore things like tuns of people having asthma, cancer increasing, babies born without brains. But, what can you do? These people will not listen. Even if global warming doesn't exist, it still doesn't mean we should be dumping dangerous chemicals casually.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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more effieicnt industrial methods- solves industrial pollution
special C02 eating pollen- fixes ozoon layer
colonize mars- population problem
Fusion is still a few decades off, and it seems we need to fix the problem sooner than that.
Hydrogen cars at the moment don't make sense, since the process used to make the hyrdogen produces CO2.
Those efficient industrial methods will cost the economies of the world trillions of dollars, and will be hard in countries dominated by industry like the US and Japan.
Mars is obviously a century away, the population problem will get bigger and bigger sooner. I'd say colonize the moon first.
All in all, these are all going to help, but we need something faster sooner. Cars, more hybrids, ALL hybrids. That cuts the problem in half, which will keep us going until Hydrogen is feasible. Energy, invest more money in building clean power plants, we need to update the national power grid anyway, might as well put that money into clean power. Colonizing the moon isn't really that farfetched, we know that moon soil can be used to grow plants, and that there is a rare isotope there that can be used for mass amounts of energy, i don't remember how but they tell you at NASA (I was in Houston last month). One shuttle load of moon rock of the right isotope could power the US for a year.
My point is there are obviously tons of solutions out there. But it seems like no president will just sit down and FORM A PLAN, actually sit down and plan it out year by year, because there is so much information they feel daunted by it.
Also, whatever worldwide plan that is formed, it must include the developing world, or the US will never agree to it.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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more effieicnt industrial methods- solves industrial pollution
special C02 eating pollen- fixes ozoon layer
colonize mars- population problem
Fusion is still a few decades off, and it seems we need to fix the problem sooner than that.
Hydrogen cars at the moment don't make sense, since the process used to make the hyrdogen produces CO2.
Those efficient industrial methods will cost the economies of the world trillions of dollars, and will be hard in countries dominated by industry like the US and Japan.
Mars is obviously a century away, the population problem will get bigger and bigger sooner. I'd say colonize the moon first.
All in all, these are all going to help, but we need something faster sooner. Cars, more hybrids, ALL hybrids. That cuts the problem in half, which will keep us going until Hydrogen is feasible. Energy, invest more money in building clean power plants, we need to update the national power grid anyway, might as well put that money into clean power. Colonizing the moon isn't really that farfetched, we know that moon soil can be used to grow plants, and that there is a rare isotope there that can be used for mass amounts of energy, i don't remember how but they tell you at NASA (I was in Houston last month). One shuttle load of moon rock of the right isotope could power the US for a year.
My point is there are obviously tons of solutions out there. But it seems like no president will just sit down and FORM A PLAN, actually sit down and plan it out year by year, because there is so much information they feel daunted by it.
Also, whatever worldwide plan that is formed, it must include the developing world, or the US will never agree to it.
I'm actually with Sid Meier on this one. Useful fusion isn't decades away. They actually broke even a while ago. Then funding got cut and they couldn't build the next reactor.
Hydrogen/Oxygen cars are not impractical. Hydrogen and Oxygen can be produced through electrolysis which requires only electricity which can be produced the same way it is now in cars. In short, with a little work we should be able to engineer a car that used water as its fuel. I think it may have already been done at one point actually.
Mars does not have to be a century away. We have the technology, its only the will and money that is lacking. The will in that NASA isn't even trying to set up any sort of colonization effort whatsoever. If they concentrated on it, they could probably acheive it with their current funds. It would require giving the entire space industry a bit of kick in the arse, since those comercial aerospace giants are quite happy with their current cost+ contracts to produce massively outdated and ABSURDLY over priced rockets.
What's the cost plus system you say? Its how the government currently pays its corporate contracts. It tells the company "tell us how much it will cost to do X and then tack on a y% profit and thats how much we'll give you". Whats the problem with this system? All the company has to do to raise its profit is to increase its costs. Perhaps Robert Zubrin explains it best:
quote: From "Entering Space" by Robert Zubrin
To see how this has worked, consider the case of the Lockheed Martin corporation, the largest aerospace contractor in the world. I was employed as a senior, and later staff, engineer at the prime facility of this company for seven years. Lockheed Martin almost never accepts hardware contracts on a fixed-cost basis. that is, the company rarely says to the U.S. governmen, "We will produce the ABC vehicle for you at a price of $X. If it costs us less than $X to make it, we'll make a profit. If it costs us more, we will take a loss." Instead, most important contracts are negotiated along the following lines: "We will produce the ABC vehicle for a cost of about $X. We will then add a 10 percent fee to whatever it actually costs us to produce to provide the company with a modest profit." In other words, the more the ABC vehicle costs to produce, the more money the company makes. Hence, in addition to the vast numbers of accounting personnel that the cost-plus contracting system necessarily entails, the company is saturated with "planners", "marketeers", and "matrix managers", amoung swarms of other overhead personnel. Of the 9000 people employed at teh Lockheed Martin main plant in Denver (where the Atlas and Titan launch vehicles are made) only about 1000 actually work in the factory. The fact that Lockheed Martin is keenly competitive with the other aerospace giants indicates that their overhead structures are similar.
Yeah, somewhat off topic. But that frustrates me. Its also the reason these companies aren't innovating at all. We made the jump from the first space launches to landing on the moon in about 9 years. The shuttle is now 20 years old. The space shuttle was designed almost 25 years ago. Those things are older than my car!! Lockheed Martin has a working prototype for a much cheaper and better luanch vehicle. They're sitting on the designs which are pattented and not doing anything with them. Its not in their interest to do anything with them.
So in short, given a little (gargantuan) kick in the butt the aerospace industry could shape up, produce much better, cheaper launch vehicles, and we could be to mars in no time flat. But it requires people to care and make the government give NASA and the industry that kick in the rear.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
Just to brag, Robert Zubrin and I are buds. I lived across the street from him as a child and played with his son.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
Mars is millenia away. We could setup basic science colonies, but without supplies from earth, or harnessing comets/asteroids, to terraform the [EDIT: Mars] would take thousands of years to get it habitable. There's no known way to speed up the process (which makes sense, since it took millions of years to "terraform" earth to be hospitable). It'd be quicker to gain near-light speed travel and get to a planet like earth in another solar system.
Currently the most efficient system for extracting hydrogen is using fossil fuels. Oh metallic prosthetics! Electrolysis, like all methods, requires more energy to extract the hydrogen than the hydrogen provides. So how do we power the systems that do the electrolysis. Solar power/fusion, likely, but both would require significant changes to our society to have a chance to pull off.
quote:In short, with a little work we should be able to engineer a car that used water as its fuel.
Water isn't a fuel - it does not release energy. If the electricity is in the car, it would be far more efficient to simply drive the motor with the electricity, rather than using it to convert water to hydrogen and oxygen to burn to drive a motor.
Now, if we get to the point where electricity is cheap (through fusion, solar, or whatever), then electrolysis might be feasible as a means of producing hydrogen as a portable energy storage medium.
quote:Mars is millenia away. We could setup basic science colonies, but without supplies from earth, or harnessing comets/asteroids, to terraform the [EDIT: Mars] would take thousands of years to get it habitable. There's no known way to speed up the process (which makes sense, since it took millions of years to "terraform" earth to be hospitable). It'd be quicker to gain near-light speed travel and get to a planet like earth in another solar system.
We could terraform it to the point where all you'd need are inflatable oxygen domes for a colony in under 50 years. There are large amounts CO2 trapped in the soil, frozen, all we'd have to do is get the temp up to the point where that starts to melt and it'll fuel itself. It would have a fairly warm, preassurized atmosphere in short order. The part that would take thousands of years is turning that CO2 atmosphere into an Earth like atmosphere. In the mean time, one could set up colonies easily enough. Also, even were this not true, it would be possible to set up more than just science stations that would be self sustating. It'd be hard work, but possible.
Back on the hydrogen cars, it could be done to make it take place with in the car itself. I don't know how, but I bet with some engineering its possible. The cars own movement would provide a great deal of that electricity, and it could be supplemented with solar power. It might even be possible to engineer it to use its own exhuast as fuel again.
quote:Just to brag, Robert Zubrin and I are buds. I lived across the street from him as a child and played with his son.
posted
While it is lovely to talk about how future developments will solve all the world's problems, it is impossible to accurately predict the costs and side-effects of those developments. We can't really even predict whether some of them will really work at all the way we imagine.
Look back at the fifties, when they though our modern era would be a time of clean, cheap energy, high living standards across the world, and excessive leisure time. Instead, we're still burning through the same oil reserves, people are still starving to death, and we work more than we ever have.
I suspect that the predictions you all are making now will look just as silly in fifty years.
Imagining (or even developing) a technology does not automatically make it practical and feasible for solving the world's problems overnight.
Posts: 1539 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Hydrogen/Oxygen cars are not impractical. Hydrogen and Oxygen can be produced through electrolysis which requires only electricity which can be produced the same way it is now in cars. In short, with a little work we should be able to engineer a car that used water as its fuel. I think it may have already been done at one point actually.
I'm getting really sick of people talking about hydrogen as though it's some sort of cure-all.
The problem with electrolysis is this: you have to put more energy into the system to make the hydrogen than you get out when you use the hydrogen. It's very inefficient.
The problem with hydrogen in general is that there is no distribution network for it, and in-situ generation and storage methods are inherently unsafe. You can't have a hydrogen fuelling station the same way you have gas stations, it's simply too much of a fire/explosion hazard.
Oh, yeah, and water is a greenhouse gas (and it comes out of your regular car's tailpipe, too). Hydrogen cars don't solve the greenhouse problem, though depending on emissions levels they might improve it.
In my opinion, hybrids are the way to go for now. When we have some efficient, non-fossil means of generating electricity, we can transition to electric cars... provided we can somehow make batteries cleaner (don't forget that car batteries contain heavy metals).
Basically, "hydrogen is the answer" is a massive oversimplification, and overlooks some pretty fundamental problems with using hydrogen to run cars.
(This is kind of a pet peeve of mine, in case you couldn't tell.)
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote:Back on the hydrogen cars, it could be done to make it take place with in the car itself. I don't know how, but I bet with some engineering its possible. The cars own movement would provide a great deal of that electricity, and it could be supplemented with solar power. It might even be possible to engineer it to use its own exhuast as fuel again.
This violates the law of conservation of energy in so many ways I don't know where to begin.
posted
First, I'll address the "colonize mars" fallacy.
This goes back to a brain teaser I heard a long time ago. It goes like this:
If an amoeba replicates itself in 2 minutes, and from the time you put an amoeba into a jar it takes exactly one day for one amoeba to fill the jar; How long will it take to fill half the jar, starting with one amoeba?
The answer is 23 hours and 58 minutes.
Colonizing mars will not solve the population problem here on earth. That would require moving billions of people from here to Mars, which simply isn't going to happen, and the effort to do it would destroy earth in the process.
Essentially, all we could do would be to transport enough humans to provide genetic variability, and let Mars begin it's own population - like the one amoeba added to the glass. It won't represent a significant change in Earth's population. In the meantime, the earth is still within the last "two minutes" of reaching the population limit.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
I'm not going to comment on the hydrogen car thing atm, becuase I think you guys might be right and I mis remembered the article I read on it. I'm looking for it now.
We could not fill up Mars at all fast enough for that ameoba analogy to apply. Earth has only a little space left. Mars has a lot. It has taken us a long time to get to this point on Earth, transport the population and we'll have a little more time. However, Mars alone is not the solution to the population problem, you are right in that. However, it is the first step. In colonizing Mars, we'll develope the infrastructure to colonize the rest of the solar system as well. We must develope that infrastructure before we can really consider mass colonization and exploration of the rest of the galaxy. But with it developed, when the solar system begins to fill up, we start spreading out into the galaxy. It builds upon itself. You have to start somewhere however, and if you sit back and say "we'll just fill it up too eventually" and don't do anything then we ARE going to fill up the Earth.
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quote: The problem with electrolysis is this: you have to put more energy into the system to make the hydrogen than you get out when you use the hydrogen. It's very inefficient.
True, that's why they don't make hydrogen with electrolysis. They use a catalytic steam/methane reformer.
The chemical equation is CH4 + 2H2O -> CO2 + 4H2
From the hydrogen in one methane molecule you wind up with twice the hydrogen, the other half coming from the water molecules. You do have to add some external heat, but the system uses highly efficient heat exchangers to keep most of the energy in the fuel. It's a pretty good system.
From what I understand, the improvement in emissions and economy is based on economy of scale (These reformers are huge) and the efficiency of the fuelcell and electric motor combination.
Making H2 to use as a combustion fuel only makes sense in terms of allowing cars to drive in congested areas without causing a pollution problem. It doesn't use less energy and might use more, but it's much cleaner energy.
Reformers can also convert methanol into H2, which moves the energy source from natural gas to corn, but even then, corn requires an enormous amount of petroleum based fertilizers as it's grown today.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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On what are you basing this? How much space do you think one person needs?
*looks outside at her neighborhood where every lot is over 2 acres, and there are acres and acres of empty land surrounding the area*
I don't think we're anywhere close to using up all our land. Have you driven through the state of Mississippi?
quote:You have to start somewhere however, and if you sit back and say "we'll just fill it up too eventually" and don't do anything then we ARE going to fill up the Earth.
Not necessarily - there's plenty of room right now, and if birth rates fall to an average of two children per couple, then how is there a problem?
[ March 03, 2005, 08:10 PM: Message edited by: Belle ]
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote: We could not fill up Mars at all fast enough for that ameoba analogy to apply.
Filling up Mars isn't the issue. Removing one amoeba from the jar two minutes from the time the jar is full won't make any difference in the grand scheme of things, the jar will still be full two minutes later.
Removing Mars colonists "Adam and Eve" from the Earth won't have any impact on the earth's population.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
So it won't, but it might have an impact on the survival of the species. Populations that crash tend to crash hard. And our civilisation is not only fragile, it would be hard to rebuild; no more easily accessible resources.
As for hydrogen : Yes, you use more energy making it by electrolysis than you get out of burning it. That is totally irrelevant. Energy we have to burn; between nuclear fusion, hydropower, and sunlight, there is more than enough energy. The problem is that none of those will run a car - unless, of course, you package them in a more easily transportable form, like hydrogen.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
Getting back to Dan's original statement...
God let humans kill his own son. If you go with Genesis, God didn't make it impossible for humans to take fruit from the tree of knowledge.
He put us on this world, we do with it as we will. But we have to eventually settle up with what we've done to it, either in the immediate here and now, or the hereafter.
Personally, I believe that God expects us to be good stewards of the planet. We are expected to make good use of the resources we have here, exploit it even if you will, but not to despoil it profoundly.
And we've done a real number on this planet. It may not be ruined, but we lurch more than inch closer to it every day.
But I just don't see God saying to us as individuals "Don't do this."
I do, however, see Him asking each of us, in our own turn, "Why did you do this?" for better or for worse.
This world is an incredible gift, but it is also a responsibility. That something that we Christians seem to forget now and then: that salvation and redemption do not absolve someone eternally of future responsibilities.
If anything, it should serve to remind us to be responsible.
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Belle, I don't think the issue is that we'll use up all the physical space for human habitation. I think people are concerned that we'll have too large a population to support with our ever-diminishing supply of fertile, arable land.
There's a lot of room in west Texas, but nobody's using it for a reason Posts: 1539 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote: Not necessarily - there's plenty of room right now, and if birth rates fall to an average of two children per couple, then how is there a problem?
Room isn't the issue. The issue is the environmental impact 6 billion people have on the earth.
The Earth is in the process of deforestation. Animal and plant species are disappearing at a rate that in itself is a major environmental disaster. The earth's oceans and atmosphere are taking on more energy and changing the climate.
Human habitation relies on the exploitation of millions of years worth of accumulated solar energy, in the form of fossil fuels, which is being depleted at a rate which is totally out of proportion to the rate of solar influx. Our food production relies on fossil fuels for fertilizer, so when we run out, we also run out of food.
Regardless whether it's tens of years, or hundreds of years, we will run out of fossil fuels.
Saying that we can support the current 6 billion people indefinitely is like saying that a car can drive indefinitely, just because it hasn't run out of gas yet.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
Of course, Belle, you also have to take into account the amount of land necessary to grow food to feed the people, and an ecosystem healthy enough to otherwise sustain them. There's more to maximum population density than how many people you can physically fit into a given area.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
I'm still holding out hope that thermal depolymerization might wind up being a potential solution to the fossil fuels issue, along with renewable energy farms deployed en masse to produce hydrogen. Sadly, both technologies at the moment -- even with the latest technology -- still come down at around 130% the cost of an equivalent amount of oil energy. Until they get cheaper or oil gets harder to find, we're not going to transfer techs. And if we wait for the latter to happen, sadly, we'll be looking at a worldwide depression during the transition.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote: There's a lot of room in west Texas, but nobody's using it for a reason
The Llano Estacado? I seem to remember reading that a branch of the Plains Indians figured out how to make the Staked Plains home . . . Posts: 5609 | Registered: Jan 2003
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quote: quote: We could not fill up Mars at all fast enough for that ameoba analogy to apply.
Filling up Mars isn't the issue. Removing one amoeba from the jar two minutes from the time the jar is full won't make any difference in the grand scheme of things, the jar will still be full two minutes later.
Removing Mars colonists "Adam and Eve" from the Earth won't have any impact on the earth's population.
Ok, now that I understand your analogy I'll put my point into the context of that analogy: by colonizing Mars, you remove the cap which keeps the amoeba in the jar and allow them to spill out onto the table, then onto the floor and then out the door.
posted
But that doesn't help the amoeba's stewing in their own waste products in the original jar. Either way that mommy jar is screwed.
Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
Perhaps, done inteligently you could probably get a good enough flow leaving the jar so that the jar never fills up. Requires will power though and would be work. With the cap gone, there's nothing preventing them from crawling up the sides and out over the lid before it fills up Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
Alcon, unless you can instantly transport every new amoeba out of that jar you're never going to impact it's growth significantly. Sufficed to say, unless things within the jar change, they will literally die in a pool of their own wastes or simply starve. Whichever comes first.
Did your mommy and daddy ever teach not to say never? Well I'm saying never. You'll never significantly impact the growth rate on Earth by removing some of its members.
Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Actually, I'd be willing to bet quite a bit that if we mathmatically examined this, we could show that you COULD significantly impact the population of the Earth by removing its members. I just don't have the energy right now and am headed off to bed now for finals tomorrow, I'll run through the numbers tomorrow. In the mean time good night.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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quote:True, that's why they don't make hydrogen with electrolysis. They use a catalytic steam/methane reformer.
Yes, I know. But actually, both are used, and both are inefficient. Not only that, reforming is a waste of perfectly good methane, which is the cleanest-burning fossil fuel in existence.
This is my field, so forgive me for being a bit touchy when people go off making grandiose claims that it can all be solved with "a bit of engineering."
Edit: Ethanol/methanol reforming is also inefficient.
posted
I spent 9 years working in the industrial gases/combustion field (Praxair Applications Research and Development), so it is my field as well.
As far as whether problems can be solved with "a bit of engineering" I'm 100% with you, which is why I get on my soapbox about population.
I also drive a Prius, and I stopped at 2 kids.
But there is a big difference between the efficiency of electrolysis and reforming. Reforming is more efficient than electrolysis.
Use of the word "inefficient" without a basis for comparison is problematic. If you noticed my post earlier, I said that the improved efficiency comes from the fuel cell and electric motor, in combination with hydrogen, not by using H2 as a motor fuel. Each combination has a different efficency, and they need to be appropriately compared. Using CH4 as a motor fuel is undoubtedly more efficient than using H2 as a motor fuel, but is it more efficent than the fuel cell?
I don't have enough actual data to apply numbers to each of these possibilities, and I suspect that those who are actually doing the development work are using speculative data. But from what I've heard and read, the hydrogen fuel cell does represent a legitimate step forward. I'm willing to give it that much.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote: Actually, I'd be willing to bet quite a bit that if we mathmatically examined this, we could show that you COULD significantly impact the population of the Earth by removing its members.
Depends on how you remove it's members. By rocket, you'd use a huge amount of energy to remove each person. That energy could be put to much better use than that.
Space elevator? Big step. Sounds good, but it's awfully problematic. I'd say it's worth trying maybe, but I wouldn't hold much hope for it.
Of course, Earth's population has members removed on a regular basis, by death. But that subject is really emotional, so it's hard to make arguments from that perspective.
The only real argument that can be made is for reducing birthrate. But China has done that and we often claim their policy is a "human rights violation."
George Carlin may have the only sane viewpoint: We are destroying ourselves through our own stupidity, and he thinks it's funny, because in the grand scheme of things, human life is insignificant anyway.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote: So it won't, but it might have an impact on the survival of the species. Populations that crash tend to crash hard. And our civilisation is not only fragile, it would be hard to rebuild; no more easily accessible resources.
I agree that the purpose of colonization is to put some of your eggs in a different basket.
However, we have more easily accessible resources than ever. We have vast fields of assorted, pre-refined metals, bio-mass, even petrolium products... all set aside for our future post-apocolypse descendants to find and use to rebuild civilization.
quote: That doesn't need to be scare-quoted. It is a human rights violation.
The quotes imply that the term is subjective. Which it is.
And I disagree with your opinion. A policy of reduced childbirth is absolutely necessary in order to provide for the possibility of continued human life on this planet.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Wow. Remind me never to vote for you for any public office.
There's nothing subjective about that, unless you call all designations of human rights subjective. What do we do to violators? Throw them in jail? Use forced abortions? Or punish the kids by denying government services?
And a policy isn't the same thing as a law. You of all people should know that.
Childbirth must be reduced. The question is how to do it.
The most likely model comes from observations from industrialized countries whose birth rates have fallen below replacement:
Availability of birth control allows people to choose on their own to have fewer children.
Low mortality rate increases confidence that offspring will survive. So people don't have extra children just in case some of them die. Some irony there: Lower mortality rate reduces population.
Popular opinion changes. Cultures that have historically had large families don't necessarily stay that way. If public opinion looks unfavorably on large families, people's choices will be affected.
Of course, if these things fail, population will likely fall off naturally, through starvation, war, general mayhem. China's way of carrying out it's policy may violate human rights, but given the conditions that necessitated the policy in the first place, what would you have done?
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quote:Actually, I'd be willing to bet quite a bit that if we mathmatically examined this, we could show that you COULD significantly impact the population of the Earth by removing its members.
I thought that's what wars were for.
And nuclear and biological accidents.
And natural disasters.
Posts: 1862 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:There's a lot of room in west Texas, but nobody's using it for a reason
Yes, but I think making good arable farmland out of West Texas is a lot more plausible than making good, arable farm land out of Mars.
There is plenty of un-farmed land on this planet, and there is plenty of food being produced from the farmland we have now.
I know people with thousands of acres of farmland they allow to go fallow because they are being subsidized NOT to grow certain crops.
We have friends who own a farm in Washington state, and only need to produce crops every third year or so - not because the land is in need of fallow cycles, but because they have no need to farm most of their land year to year becuase there would no place to sell it anyway.
We are nowhere near using all our capacity to produce food on this planet.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote: quote:If public opinion looks unfavorably on large families, people's choices will be affected.
Not very pleasant for the people with the large families ...
If they made the choice to have large families in the face of unfavorable public opinion, then they must have weighed their desire to have a large family versus having to live with people's opinion of them.
What Dagonee assumed it that a policy of reduced childbirth implies that there must be legal repercussions. That isn't the case.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:What Dagonee assumed it that a policy of reduced childbirth implies that there must be legal repercussions.
No I didn't. We were specifically discussing China's policy, which uses the law to compel compliance. The variations I discussed were of the means of compulsion.
quote: We are nowhere near using all our capacity to produce food on this planet.
Again, this goes back to the current dependence on fossil fuels, from which we make fertilizer. We are only able to grow food at the current rates as long as fossil fuels are available.
We *will* run out.
Then there's the rate at which we are destroying arable land, in terms of erosion, pollution, and land development.
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