The Over Population Problem

Discussion in 'Science & Society' started by Liebling, Feb 10, 2009.

  1. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    No you cannot freeze the oceans, even with energy available from a billion nuclear fusion power plants because energy is conserved. If you want to freeze the oceans, you need to erect a reflecting umbrella between Earth and sun, but not on the night side. You cannot do it by producing and releasing more energy on earth. Here is why:

    The oceans have a large amount of thermal energy you need to transfer to some place. Conceivably you could build a zillion heat pumps and pull thermal energy out of the oceans and inject this extracted energy deep into the earth, but the thermal energy released by your nuclear power plants would be greater than the energy removed from the oceans so the oceans, air etc. would be growing hotter, not colder.

    This is the same reason one who knows the laws of thermodynamics* does not suggest fighting global warming with heat pumps by having their hot radiators radiate IR to space.

    Three inch tall humans, although very unlikely, is not AFAIK impossible and thus is more feasible than you magic solution.

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    *It is probably way beyond your comprehension but for others and briefly:

    Consider two equal mass tanks of water at T > t temperatures. Average temperature = (T+t)/2. You could run a thermal engine between them and use the power generated to run a heat pump taking heat from the colder tank to restore the heat to the hotter tank. If there were no frictions and both operated at their Carnot limits you could just "break even." (Have a perpetual motion system) If any friction or either heat pump or the engine is not operating at the Carnot limit, then some external energy source is required and the average temperature will be increasing.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 9, 2009
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  3. Repo Man Valued Senior Member

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    I'm alternatively amused/horrified by Pro's complete indifference to the fate of endangered species in his vision of the future. And his characterization of existing wildlife refuges as a waste of space that could be better used to increase the number of humans. Fortunately, he represents a tiny fringe view. One that still angers me with its combination of arrogance and ignorance, but his fantastic ego centrism isn't shared by a statistically significant number of people.
     
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  5. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    To DRZion:

    Here is I hope an analogy way for you to understand why freezing the ocean with refrigerators is impossible, even if many fusion power plants exist, without you needing to know any laws of thermodynamics:

    Imagine the Earth is your kitchen, with perfectly insulated walls and doors and that all doors and windows it has are closed. Imagine the interior of your refrigerator is the oceans. Then open the refrigerator door and leave it open. (The oceans do readily exchange heat with the rest of the earth.) The inside of the refrigerator will start to warm up and the refrigerator will begin to run. This is taking electric energy and turning it in heat as the refrigerator motor runs. I.e. energy in form of heat is being added to the "kitchen world." Initially the cooling coils and area near them inside the frig will become colder but all the heat they are collecting is being dumped into the air behind the refrigerator. All of the electric power, which is being converted to heat, is being given to the air behind the refrigerator too. I assume you understand that the air in the kitchen is steadly getting hotter. Now watch for a day or two, say until it is 300 degrees F in the kitchen with the refrigerator door still open.

    Do you think the "ocean interior" of the refrigerator is getting warmer or colder?
     
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  7. ripleofdeath Registered Senior Member

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    after some consideration i think the most natural thing to do is simply stop giving aid to Africa.

    feeding poor starving people so they can breed and have 10 children so 9 of them will starve and suffer and die horribly just so one can live a horrible life to be able to breed even more children that will suffer and die horribly(if not in genocidal attacks and tribal wars that have been going on for decades) seems a little odd unles you enjoy watching lots of people starve and die of horrible causes.


    simply stop giving them aid.
    cut off media
    leave them to it and in about another 100 years there should be one ruling country that will eventually force peace though the gun just like is has been done for time immemorial.

    trying to pretend that there is not massive corruption and extortion in these countrys where their own people feed off the others is no different to being a psychopath.
    at some point one must make ones self availed of the true facts and act accordingly.

    i think it is well documented now beyond reasonable doubt that the vast majority of African countrys have no desire for non violent life or birth control or a shared cooperative democratic society/country.

    lets cut our losses and start being logical and sensible about it shall we ?

    there are starving children in your own country dying of preventable diseases and illness and who cant afford operations and are dying and suffering for their entire lifes because you give your money to someone else to support a fatally flawed society and country.

    look at operas school as an example...
    no sooner had it been built with all the fanfare than the people in it started acting like savages again.
    do you think those girls are going to teach their own children without hitting them ?
    of coarse not!
     
  8. DRZion Theoretical Experimentalist Valued Senior Member

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    If the air in the insulated room is getting warmer, then the fridge must be getting colder. The room is insulated, so according to conservation of energy when the air in the room gets very warm then the fridge should get very cold. There is however flow of energy into the room through electricity that powers the fridge, so indeed it may be getting warmer overall.

    However, there is no need for the fridge door to be open. I would compare it more to a shot glass with a thermocouple in it. Heat gets taken out and put into the air. If the thermocouple is strong enough then the shot glass should remain solid ice. Of course, in the ocean there would have to be some kind of insulating barrier to prevent convection from giving heat from to water we wish to freeze.

    I have not really thought of the effect that taking energy from the oceans would do to the atmosphere. The atmosphere should indeed get warmer. I do not propose freezing the entire oceans over, just certain sections. For instance, an island several hundred kilometers squared could be built off the coast of Israel for the Palestinians. Also, coastal cities could gain valuable real estate by building on frozen water.
     
  9. Giambattista sssssssssssssssssssssssss sssss Valued Senior Member

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    His views seem almost too comically childish for me to even think he's serious about what he says. Maybe he gets his kicks coming on forums like this and riling up people with a little more sensibility than what he displays?

    Just a thought.
     
  10. Giambattista sssssssssssssssssssssssss sssss Valued Senior Member

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    Do you mean Oprah?

    I think I'm distantly fuzzy about this...
     
  11. takandjive Killer Queen Registered Senior Member

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    My parents had three children and now all of us want no more than two. My SIL came from a large family and just wants one; she's making my brother get snipped.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  12. grimace Banned Banned

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    the worlds is going to be overpopulated anyway. i jusyt have children when they pop out and raise them up to be good citizens.
     
  13. takandjive Killer Queen Registered Senior Member

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    This is like saying women are going to get raped anyway, so why not sexually assault all you want.
     
  14. grimace Banned Banned

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    :wallbang:

    am i the smartest person here?

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  15. takandjive Killer Queen Registered Senior Member

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    If that's the case, we're fucked without a kiss.

    Pun intended.
     
  16. Repo Man Valued Senior Member

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    An appealing notion. But he seems sincere in his insanity to me. Maintaining the same intensely focused madness across multiple forums, and supporting it with posts that rival the length of War And Peace seems like an awful lot of work for a troll.
     
  17. ripleofdeath Registered Senior Member

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    oops my bad

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    yup indeed i do, indeed i do.

    my question is maybe not soo clear though.

    my point is teaching with violence breeds violence.
    if mothers will not give up using violence to control their children then violence will be continuously cultivated and perpetuated at such a high level of societal dysfunction that it self validates as it does currently in all muslim and christian countries.

    i applaud Oprah and think she is doing quite well.
    obviousely she is not doing things the same way i would, but then she would not be Oprah if she did.

    why is it that the masses of poor population do not rise up to depose the corrupt governments in Africa ?
     
    Last edited: Jun 10, 2009
  18. grimace Banned Banned

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    ripple, you are looking at things too linearly.
     
  19. ripleofdeath Registered Senior Member

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    explain that concept that you purport that i am suffering from.
    considering it is YOUR own concept i expect you to explain it quite clearly.
     
  20. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Enough of your stupid fonts already! Try that on my board and I'll normalize them all. (Or was it you to whom I already did that to on Linguistics?) You're telling everyone that your posts are more important than theirs so they have to be more visible and that's simply rude. Save the emphasis for points that need to be emphasized. Don't just paint your entire post in hippie rainbow stripes because you discovered the software commands to do it. That's downright childish and it makes you look like someone not worth taking seriously. This is, after all, a place of science. It's not an academy and everyone is free to take off their lab coat once in a while and blow off a little steam or ask for dating advice, but please don't muddy up the serious discussions with excessive, distracting and simply pointless graphics.
    Because they have no leaders. It's virtually impossible for a disorganized, decentralized mob of people, no matter how noble their goal and unanimous their attitude, to prevail against a government with a hierarchy of leadership and vast organized resources including everything from control of transportation and the food supply to a monopoly on the most powerful weapons.

    When a leader does pop up in these places, typically one of three things happens.
    • 1. The government kills him.
    • 2. The government coopts him by offering him a position and rewarding him handsomely.
    • 3. He creates a rival quasi-government that ends up as corrupt and ruthless as the first one.
    Arguably the root of the Africans' problems is that they were never allowed to develop in their own way at their own pace. Unlike the Americas, where indigenous civilizations developed from their own Neolithic cultures several thousand years later than those in Asia and Egypt, sub-Saharan Africa is too close to Europe and Asia so Europeans and Asians were always meddling in their affairs. Ultimately, in the European colonial era, African tribes were dragged out of the Stone Age and forced into a European model of nations and states that simply did not fit.

    Europe destroyed (or at least damaged almost beyond repair) African culture and replaced it with something that doesn't work because you can't fast-forward the journey to civilization. Those intermediate steps must be taken.

    So now we've got an entire dysfunctional continent and it will be difficult for anyone, African or outsider, to figure out how to repair it. The wisest thing I've seen written by Africans is a plea for us to simply leave them alone for as long as it takes and let them find their own way. But between the opportunists on one side who want to exploit their resources, and the sincerely good people on the other side who can't stand to sit on the sidelines and watch babies die, you can be sure that the rest of the world isn't going to leave Africa alone.
     
  21. takandjive Killer Queen Registered Senior Member

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    Fraggle, I love you.
     
  22. Giambattista sssssssssssssssssssssssss sssss Valued Senior Member

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    Funny!:bravo:
     
  23. Giambattista sssssssssssssssssssssssss sssss Valued Senior Member

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    I guess your right.
    What other forums? Have you seen any?

    Question: is it just me, or does he sometimes sound like he's in a religiously induced trance when he's talking? Like his eyes are hazy after smoking too much Jesus?
     

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