Too many people

DeadElvis · Post by **DeadElvis** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 12:52 pm

I've seen / read a few things recently where they have touched on over-population on earth. I think there are about 7 billion people on earth right now and it is increasing by about 1.5% a year. If it continues to increase by this amount then in approx 50 years the population of the world will have doubled.
According to some the world is only capable of comfortably sustaining 2 billion people... There's only so many resources to go round.
If China continues to grow and develop at the rate it is it will soon consume all of the worlds' daily oil and paper supply itself. And that's not including India where the population of Australia is born everyday.

We are encouraged to live longer, be healthy, exercise, eat the right food etc and as a result life expectancy is increasing and we are hanging around for longer, have to work for longer and get our pensions later. But is this a good thing? The world needs a lot of us to disappear so should we really be encouraging people to live longer?

Perhaps smoking in pubs should be compulsary rather than banned?
No seatbelts in cars?
Compulsary fry-ups every morning (sweet)?
No health and safety laws etc

Worldwide birth control?
A big ol' war every 50 years?

And if we do reach bursting point will we realise in time?

Would be intersted to hear some thoughts on this.

Now whar's me flamethrower.....

Wyvern · Post by **Wyvern** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 1:08 pm

There's no collective consciousness and therefore nothing will be done.

Here's one for you: Birth Licences. You must be qualified to have children...

As you point out though, it's the developing countries causing the main problems. Western population is stable or decreasing (ignoring immigration.)

Something's gonna give sonner or later, and looking at the pathetic investment in development of extra terrerstrial resources ( mining and stuff ) we are going to have ducked this world up in short order and promptly have a pretty major collapse in civilisation.

Presumably the Western plan is to maintain primary control of long range effective nuclear weaponry and eliminate all of the competition as soon as we can get away with it

Post by **Haviland** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 1:42 pm

It's pretty unrealistic to demand that the developing nations halt any of their development because we're now worried that it might affect our quality of life. We've got ours, now fuck you... That way lies wars, both cold and hot.

We need to work on getting the "dirty" crap off-planet, primarily power generation which currently involves burning fossil fuels or atoms.

There's a whole Sun out there, generating more than enough power to meet our needs and let the entire planet live in relative luxury. All we've got to do is go and get it.

Book of the topic - A Step Further Out, by Jerry Pournelle - Published in 1979. Available for 50p or so (second hand) from Amazon.

DeadElvis · Post by **DeadElvis** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 1:48 pm

Presumably the Western plan is to maintain primary control of long range effective nuclear weaponry and eliminate all of the competition as soon as we can get away with it

Or maybe ignore and do nothing to help Africa..?

Wyvern · Post by **Wyvern** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 1:49 pm

Unfortunately we can barely get 5 or 6 people into orbit and keep them there... and spending in this area is opposed by short sighted types who ask whether we realise just how many sandwiches that money could have bought poor ickle children...

Agree with you on the energy thing - it has to be cheap as well as off-world though. I'm not sure how feasible trapping solar radiation is with our current engineering expertise but could we not look at lunar development for power gen?

Does the lunar surface have enough area to trap sufficient solar energy?

Post by **Dunwa** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 1:50 pm

What's that you say ... you wanna war ... Yeeeeeeeeeehah.

Wyvern · Post by **Wyvern** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 1:52 pm

Dunwa wrote:

What's that you say ... you wanna war ... Yeeeeeeeeeehah.

He wants to start a war... start a nuclear war....

At the gay bar, gay bar gay bar

http://www.hankdracula.co.uk/AtTheGayBar.mov

Safe for work

DeadElvis · Post by **DeadElvis** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 2:01 pm

Here's one for you: Birth Licences. You must be qualified to have children...

Always thought it was odd that you need a license to be deemed fit to look after a dog but any old chav can lob out 10 screaming kids

Does the lunar surface have enough area to trap sufficient solar energy?

Are the yanks not setting up a permanent moon base in 12 years time or something?

Post by **Dunwa** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 2:20 pm

Bush said it so it must be true. I think it was only because China said they were going to mine minerals on the moon.

Corm · Post by **Corm** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 3:06 pm

Meh. I agree Col but aint nothing going to change because there are too many ignorant bottom feeders in the world. Im sure about 40% of the kids born in the UK today are born into unsustainable family units of one sort or another but these folk still have kids.

As Wyvern said a marriage birth licence would be a good thing but it would also be political suicide for whichever politican was stupid enough to see the light, decide to finally do their job and tell the truth. Same goes for most of the things that are wrong in ALL countries the world over. You tell the truth and your political career will be over.

The fact is to fix the problems in the world we need a revoloution to a benevolent dictatorship where the leader and his cronies are quiet happily able to put to death millions for no better reason than they are wasting energy, stupid, crippled, having too many kids, unemployable etc. 'course thats as likely to happen as the 2nd coming.

Its a sick messed up world full of greed, lies and selfish self agrandisement you may as well all get used to it and enjoy it while you can cause your kids kids sure as hell wont be able to. Now excuse me while I head home to a bath filled to the brim and then a nice relaxing evening in my well lighted sitting room in front of my roaring gas fire whilst nibbling on the various treats I have bought myself despite no intention of ever eating any of them.

Corm · Post by **Corm** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 3:11 pm

On a side note you cant generate power off world because you would have to transport it back and batteries just arent that efficient. A solar plant on the moon would only be good for things on the moon. There is enough water/ice etc up there to make oxygen and such like so if they did decide to build a station there it is sustainable for a few folk at least. Not that it would ease any of the worlds problems.

The real soloutions to energy problems (which its way past fixing anyway the damage has been done) is the Fusion power if it works and doesnt manage to crack the planet and green energy generation such as wind and solar power.

BTW if you want to make a difference you can start by installing Solar panels in your house (you get a govt grant for this if you live in Scotland) and getting one of these hooked up to your roof. Or maybe 2 or more...

http://www.stealthgen.co.uk/

Total cost works out around £3500 for the windmill and slightly less for solar panels unless you self install them in which case you can knock the price down to around £2k.

Wyvern · Post by **Wyvern** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 3:18 pm

You can beam it for example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_ ... ansmission
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_energy_transfer

Those are both hideous pages but the concepts are sound. Remeber we are talking about being at a technology level for significant offworld engineering :wink:

Presumably you could also create compounds with signifcantly greater potential energy than mere batteries. Electricity isn't always the best way to transport energy, just happens to be cheap over wires and relatively straightforward.

If you have cheap and abundant energy you can do practically anything.

EDIT: incidentally wind power is useless due to the massive land take required. Solar energy on the ground is unreliable.

Tidal energy is potentially far more useful, with seabed installations:
http://www.darvill.clara.net/altenerg/tidal.htm

Corm · Post by **Corm** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 3:23 pm

I havent read those pages but i point blank refuse to belive in beaming power. Robert Rankin the celebrated comedey writer often writes about its possibilites. Which really tells me all i need to know about it.

Also if we are talking about technological advances that havent been developt yet then we can also talk about my all fixing ray of hope that can be beamed out of a persons arse whenever something goes wrong near them.

More to the point the thing with Wikis is that anyone can contribute to them, even crack pots...

Corm · Post by **Corm** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 3:26 pm

Wyvern wrote:
EDIT: incidentally wind power is useless due to the massive land take required. Solar energy on the ground is unreliable.

Wrong and wrong. If you were right 75% of European Countries with hot climates and even those with climates like ours (i.e. Germany) wouldnt be making it the law to have solar panels installed to heat your water. As for the wind power bit there is a blog of a guy using the Stealth Gen44 wind turbine i posted about and actually making surplus energy from it for his household. Hes currently trying to sort something out whereby his local supplier buys it back off him.

Post by **Haviland** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 3:26 pm

Wyvern wrote: If you have cheap and abundant energy you can do practically anything.

Yep, that's Pournelle's argument - solar stations in orbit beaming down via microwave.