Overpopulation Rhetoric is Alarmist and Counterproductive

[morriswalters]

Consider that this the modern expansion has been based on cheap energy, primarily fossil fuels. Currently, in so far as I am aware, there is nothing in the pipeline which provides the energy density at the cost of fossil fuels. Add to that that amount of material derived from fossil fuels sources as in plastics and other base materials. In addition consider that what we are effectively doing is releasing fossil carbon that had already been taken out of the environment once and asking the environment to absorb it again. Consider that the ultimate carrying capacity of the planet is a product of the ability of the various systems to maintain the ecosystem in such a way as to the environment in a state that is advantageous to us.

What would you call that behavior if it was a man who inherited a large sum of money and then spent it without trying to preserve it in any fashion with the expectation that he would hit the lottery thus giving him more capital to waste. This is what betting on Science you don't have yet is doing. You are betting that you will get what you need when you need it.

Your right but it's lack of wealth. But its not like we could fix the massive inequalities between countries by simple redistribution. We need a massive increase in production for that to happen, the kind we are currently seeing in China and India.

Would you care to speculate on where the resources to support this expansion will com from?

Certainly developed nations birthrates have dropped, but China's and India's haven't yet.

Erm, could I get a citation on that? If you go here:

http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/unpp/panel_indicators.htm

and check the fertility rate of China and India, it shows them both decreasing. China's is well under 2.0 at this point, although that presumably is heavily influenced by their One Child policy.

I should have said population, I stand corrected. Population is not a thing where you just throw on the breaks and then it stops. China's population is expected to increase until sometime around 2030 according to this. The last projection for India is to increase to 2050 according to this.

[Dark567]

Consider that this the modern expansion has been based on cheap energy, primarily fossil fuels. Currently, in so far as I am aware, there is nothing in the pipeline which provides the energy density at the cost of fossil fuels.

Nuclear.

Your right but it's lack of wealth. But its not like we could fix the massive inequalities between countries by simple redistribution. We need a massive increase in production for that to happen, the kind we are currently seeing in China and India.

Would you care to speculate on where the resources to support this expansion will com from?

Other than energy(see above), I don't see a lack of any other resources that would prevent the lack of the poor world obtaining wealth, just the necessary production to take those resources and make them useful.

[morriswalters]

Unfortunately the driver for a world economy hasn't been cheap electrical power. It has been oil used as fuel. So unless it is your contention that we can fuel cars with nuclear power I fail to see your point. And while I am certainly in favor of the electric vehicle, again you run into the problem of gambling that the technology will be available when we need it. Current battery tech isn't even close. There is a battery type proposed by IBM that could get close but by their calculations it is way off, assuming they can make it work at all in a production environment. In the US alone there are approximately 25000000 cars. Not counting trucks, boats, trains, airplanes, tractors, lawnmowers, and so on, all based on fossil fuels.

It's intriguing that you don't see a shortage of resources. I see three without even pushing hard. Water, sanitation, food. Some of that is because resources are not evenly distributed through the environment. Also the cost has been driven up on almost all of the most important base materials. Iron, copper, rare earths, ect. Copper has become so valuable that they steal the gutters off churches. And I am currently paying 4 US dollars per gallon of gas. Bless Europeans who pay even more.

[LaserGuy]

Other than energy(see above), I don't see a lack of any other resources that would prevent the lack of the poor world obtaining wealth, just the necessary production to take those resources and make them useful.

There are a variety of elements, such as rare-earth metals, that are sufficiently scarce that it is unlikely we would be able to supply the entire world with current consumption levels. Even for more common elements like copper, there are plenty of possibilities for major supply disruptions if huge swaths of the world's population decide that they might like electricity.

Unfortunately the driver for a world economy hasn't been cheap electrical power. It has been oil used as fuel. So unless it is your contention that we can fuel cars with nuclear power I fail to see your point. And while I am certainly in favor of the electric vehicle, again you run into the problem of gambling that the technology will be available when we need it. Current battery tech isn't even close. There is a battery type proposed by IBM that could get close but by their calculations it is way off, assuming they can make it work at all in a production environment. In the US alone there are approximately 25000000 cars. Not counting trucks, boats, trains, airplanes, tractors, lawnmowers, and so on, all based on fossil fuels.

Well, I guess the idea would be that if we have a huge abundance of energy, we could probably synthesize fossil fuels out of CO2 or something, as long as we were prepared to accept the fact that it would be really, really, inefficient to do so.

[Dark567]

Unfortunately the driver for a world economy hasn't been cheap electrical power. It has been oil used as fuel.

Only half right, most industrialization both previously, and today, has been driven by coal. Cars aren't necessary for a high standard of living, most other countries don't rely on them like the US does. There are other modes of transportation.

It's intriguing that you don't see a shortage of resources. I see three without even pushing hard. Water, sanitation, food.

Only one of those is about an actual lack of natural resources(water, and even that's arguable); the other two are problems of production.

[lutzj]

Furthermore, limiting the world's population from 10 billion to 1 billion will cause neither reliance on oil nor it's scarcity to go away. You can make a case that it would be nice to have 10 times as many rare earths per person, but having more barrels/person of oil doesn't really mean much since we'll run out eventually anyway.

[Heisenberg]

I should have said population, I stand corrected. Population is not a thing where you just throw on the breaks and then it stops. China's population is expected to increase until sometime around 2030 according to this. The last projection for India is to increase to 2050 according to this.

The article that sparked this thread agrees with you. In about 30 years, the world's population will peak and begin to decline. So we're nearly at max population right now, thanks to folks voluntarily having fewer children. So why worry? If the sheer number of people were problematic, it would self-correct in my lifetime.

Only one of those is about an actual lack of natural resources(water, and even that's arguable); the other two are problems of production.

The third is the one that falls from the sky.

[cjmcjmcjmcjm]

Unfortunately the driver for a world economy hasn't been cheap electrical power. It has been oil used as fuel.

Only half right, most industrialization both previously, and today, has been driven by coal. Cars aren't necessary for a high standard of living, most other countries don't rely on them like the US does. There are other modes of transportation.

Perhaps this has to do with the fact that large-scale public transportation in the US is largely impractical, unless it is flying somewhere. Let's face it, we've got a relatively low population density here, for better or worse.

[Jonesthe Spy]

I think you're skipping over a huge amount of cause and effect here. A huge amount of crime is caused by poverty. In a society where there is less competition for scarce resources, there will be less crime. And if you look at crime statistics, you'll see that most small towns that lack the huge wealth gaps you see in our cities have far far lower crime rates per capita, not simply less crime in proportion to less population.

Your causation doesn't make sense to me. If crime is caused by poor people wanting food and iPods, then how will reducing the number of food and iPod producers result in food and iPods for everyone? Population reduction means a reduction in producers, which means fewer resources.

I think you are dwelling a bit too much in the land of theory and not enough in the real world. Aside from the rather large number of people in the world that would like gainful employment and can't find any, I invite you to consider the vast amounts of people employed in shit jobs that only exist to make money for someone higher up the food chain but contribute nothing or almost nothing to society: telemarketers, fast food jockeys, bureaucrats in insurance companies who's only job is to make it harder to file claims, WoW gold farmers, factory workers producing useless plastic jeejaws that get sent straight to landfills, etc etc. With our level of technology we can actually supply all the important necessities and even luxuries of life with only a fraction of our current population.

The idea that population increase causes an increase in crime rate is a weak correlation perpetuated by an eloquent economist which pales in comparison to the correlation between crime and lead paint. I don't see any reason to assume that a general reduction in population would have any effect on crime rates.

Again, I think you're really getting a little too into fun theories and ignoring the obvious. Sure, less brain damage from lead exposure probably results in some drop in the number of brain damaged people committing crimes. But try looking at an actual crime map from any urban area. I guarantee you that you will see the vast majority of crimes occurring in the low-income areas of that city, especially violent crimes.

One could make the argument that the crime rate has more to do with the lack of education more than poverty, but in most of the world the poor populations are the ones who get the least amount of resources spent on education so it's pretty hard to separate the two.

[morriswalters]

Unfortunately the driver for a world economy hasn't been cheap electrical power. It has been oil used as fuel.

Only half right, most industrialization both previously, and today, has been driven by coal. Cars aren't necessary for a high standard of living, most other countries don't rely on them like the US does. There are other modes of transportation.

It's intriguing that you don't see a shortage of resources. I see three without even pushing hard. Water, sanitation, food.

Only one of those is about an actual lack of natural resources(water, and even that's arguable); the other two are problems of production.

Industrialization depended on the ability to move goods and get workers to their work. Coal has a number of problems which make it less than useful in transportation. And nobody burns coal who doesn't have to. It's messy, even dirtier than oil, creates tons of solid waste products that are difficult to dispose of since they are high in levels of toxic materials, just like the mother substance. I'll grant you that most other countries don't depend on cars as we do, but neither have I noticed that they are completely free of them, as may be seen if you look at some of the problems created by the automobile in almost every country in the world as their standard of living increases.

There is no water shortage, per se. We have oceans of the stuff. But not in a useable form. People tend to like to live in places that are comfortable, like Southern California, which started in a water deficit and never got better. But water as a resource has some unique problems. Mainly that it doesn't care where people are, it exists where it pleases. So we do silly things. We overuse aquifers, farming in places where natural water resources are insufficient for the level of production that we demand. And then we compound a felony by using copious quantities of fertilizer(created by using oil in some cases) which is then leaches into the drainage system of the country in question and eventually ends up in the ocean where it fertilizes one more crop, algae. In the meantime people create waste. And what do we do with it? Well in the US we treat it and dump the clean effluent back into our national drainage system. We then take the solids and landfill them, since generally people don't trust the end product for fertilizer because we dump almost anything into our sewers. I assume most industrialized countries do the same. But this is expensive. My sewage bill is currently twice my water bill. So you end up with an interconnected mess that is extremely hard to reconcile with human needs. It seems sometime that people forget the laws of thermodynamics.

The article that sparked this thread agrees with you. In about 30 years, the world's population will peak and begin to decline. So we're nearly at max population right now, thanks to folks voluntarily having fewer children. So why worry? If the sheer number of people were problematic, it would self-correct in my lifetime.

Rather than answer that I'll ask a question. Why do you think the population of the world at some point around 2050 to 2100 would plateau and then start to decline?

Edit
Ask yourself another question, why do we grow watermelon, which is 90 percent water in a desert? Just askin.

[JudeMorrigan]

I should have said population, I stand corrected. Population is not a thing where you just throw on the breaks and then it stops. China's population is expected to increase until sometime around 2030 according to this. The last projection for India is to increase to 2050 according to this.

Yup, I have no problems with the statement that their populations will continue to increase for a while yet. China's a particularly interesting case though as their TFR is already under 2.0. The fact that their population is continuing to grow means that they have a very rapidly aging population. That's likely to have ramifications down the road.

[Heisenberg]

Rather than answer that I'll ask a question. Why do you think the population of the world at some point around 2050 to 2100 would plateau and then start to decline?

Because the smart guy who wrote the article this thread is about said so.

This is getting close to the “replacement fertility level” which, after allowing for a natural excess of boys born and women who don’t reach adulthood, is about 2.3. The UN expects global fertility to fall to 1.85 children per woman by mid-century. While a demographic “bulge” of women of child-bearing age keeps the world’s population rising for now, continuing declines in fertility will cause the world’s population to stabilize by mid-century and then probably to begin falling.

I invite you to consider the vast amounts of people employed in shit jobs that only exist to make money for someone higher up the food chain but contribute nothing or almost nothing to society: telemarketers, fast food jockeys, bureaucrats in insurance companies who's only job is to make it harder to file claims, WoW gold farmers, factory workers producing useless plastic jeejaws that get sent straight to landfills, etc etc.

I considered them. If we have half the population, won't we have half as many telemarketers? I mean, 10 years ago, we had a smaller global population, but we still had shit jobs, right? Why would decreasing population eliminate unemployment and shitty jobs?

With our level of technology we can actually supply all the important necessities and even luxuries of life with only a fraction of our current population.

With our level of technology we can feed everyone in the world 3 meals a day, but we don't. We have rich people and poor people, we always have, and I don't see how reducing population will change that. Even letting your assertion that poverty causes crime stand, you need to show that reducing population will reduce poverty for that argument to make sense.

[gmalivuk]

Because the smart guy who wrote the article this thread is about said so.

The UN expects global fertility to fall to 1.85 children per woman by mid-century.

According to what? Because this previously linked UN site has the medium variant prediction stay above 2 throughout the next century. It's only their lowest estimate that ever falls below 2.

[Heisenberg]

According to the low fertility projections, total population should peak in 2046 at 8.1 billion, and return to current levels in 2083.

I can't find the assumptions that accompany the low, medium, or high fertility projections, so I don't know how how probable that outcome is. I, for one, will be on Mars by 2083, so I don't think I should count.

[morriswalters]

Look at this about the UN study. Of course all of which begs the question, if we are exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet today than it seems to me to say that we will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. And if the population does go into decline as expected what does it do to an economy the is predicated on growth?

[Iulus Cofield]

Unfortunately the driver for a world economy hasn't been cheap electrical power. It has been oil used as fuel. So unless it is your contention that we can fuel cars with nuclear power I fail to see your point.

Unfortunately the driver for a world economy hasn't been cheap electrical power. It has been oil used as fuel.

Only half right, most industrialization both previously, and today, has been driven by coal. Cars aren't necessary for a high standard of living, most other countries don't rely on them like the US does. There are other modes of transportation.

Perhaps this has to do with the fact that large-scale public transportation in the US is largely impractical, unless it is flying somewhere. Let's face it, we've got a relatively low population density here, for better or worse.

From now on, we will travel in tubes!

[CorruptUser]

How exactly would the tubes cost 1/10 that of a railway?

[morriswalters]

Give some thought to the size of a vacuum cleaner large enough to do that. It raises the phrase "that sucks" to a whole new level.

[Griffin]

Tube delivery was actually pretty efficient back when they had them. Great way to get stuff around quickly and safely, not too expensive to run or set up, from what I understand.

Maintenance, however...

Perhaps this has to do with the fact that large-scale public transportation in the US is largely impractical, unless it is flying somewhere. Let's face it, we've got a relatively low population density here, for better or worse.

This is /exactly/ because we've got such a glut of resources, especially super cheap fuel. Sure, the sprawling, wasteful cities would take a huge and painful hit, but electric cars are more than capable for basic suburban transport, and as the costs of extreme sprawl increase people would naturally move closer.

The best way to achieve mass transit in the US is to make alternatives pricey enough that its appealing. Course, it would probably take at least a decade to start seeing real changes.

[morriswalters]

Good luck to that. They will have to take my car keys out of my cold dead hands. Keep gas cheap.

[cjmcjmcjmcjm]

Good luck to that. They will have to take my car keys out of my cold dead hands. Keep gas cheap.

At very least, the government shouldn't make it artificially expensive.

If the US can get some industry standards for swapping batteries in electric cars, we might be able to use them for real. (Let's be honest, if I can't drive as far as I want without worrying about whether I can recharge my car… also, plug-in only cars are right out, as are ones with batteries that cannot be charged from a home current)

[HungryHobo]

At very least, the government shouldn't make it artificially expensive.

Why not?

it seems a good way to cushion the blow when the price spikes and allow for a smoother transition to alternatives.

Oil is useful for a great many things, taxes can be added to deter people from using it for things where there's alternatives like suburban transport while not being applied for uses where there's no alternatives.

So for Joe-pointless-sunday-driver the price hits 10 bucks while for emergency vehicles it's still 5.

Of course that will upset the people who's ego is dependent on being able to afford to drive a 2 ton gas guzzler around for fun but screw them.

[addams]

At very least, the government shouldn't make it artificially expensive.

Why not?

it seems a good way to cushion the blow when the price spikes and allow for a smoother transition to alternatives.

Oil is useful for a great many things, taxes can be added to deter people from using it for things where there's alternatives like suburban transport while not being applied for uses where there's no alternatives.

So for Joe-pointless-sunday-driver the price hits 10 bucks while for emergency vehicles it's still 5.

Of course that will upset the people who's ego is dependent on being able to afford to drive a 2 ton gas guzzler around for fun but screw them.

I did that. I drove a 2 ton gas guzzler around for fun.

It seemed like the 'thing' to do. I did it. I learned it from my mother. She learned it from driving Logging Trucks and other interesting equipment.

Sunday afternoon drives on back roads. I loved the back roads. Logging roads are safer on Sundays. The trucks don't run on Sunday.

The truck drivers, sometimes, take the whole family back up into the woods on Sunday. Sunday Traditions. The Car was God? Nah.

The car was the transportation mode for getting to Church.

Sunday drive and picnic was Church for some people.
Not all people. Some people.

Yeah. The world can not afford that?

What can the world afford? Anything?

[HungryHobo]

the world could afford it back then, if you're willing to pay more you can still afford it but there are more important things in life and if you really want to keep doing the same thing do it with either a more effecient car or a car that runs on a more renewable form of fuel.

[Heisenberg]

if we are exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet today than it seems to me to say that we will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Until the 2080s, at least, but I have to ask: Why do you think we're exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet today?

[HungryHobo]

probably because we're depleating a lot of things like fresh ground water supplies in huge areas of the world faster than they can be replaced.

with huge investment we might be able to artificially raise the long term carrying capacity of the planet but if society froze in it's current state today then we wouldn't be able to survive indefinitly in our current state.

[morriswalters]

if we are exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet today than it seems to me to say that we will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Until the 2080s, at least, but I have to ask: Why do you think we're exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet today?

I don't know for certain, but some people speculate that we are. Look at the article on carrying capacity. Also the Club Of Rome's projections seem to be holding up. However we will do nothing about it. The thing about these things is the point of certainty is past the point of no return, much like global climate change. And until there is no doubt people will find a way to shrug it off. Generally speaking by believing that innovation will provide an answer when we need it.

Society can exist as it does today because fossil fuels are cheap, not because science made it better. Look at the global transportation network. To move the volumes on the ships that handle the worlds international trade requires oil. Sail can't do it and for that matter coal can't either. You can say the same thing for any land transport you want to name. The economy is built on it. I'll cite a couple of examples and then I'll shut up. We grow watermelons in the desert in California. Effectively California is exporting water when they do that since they are largely water, the same argument can be made with any fruit. The second example is bananas, they are shipped from South America(AKA, the banana Republics), literally thousands of miles and distributed throughout the country.

[LaserGuy]

To move the volumes on the ships that handle the worlds international trade requires oil.

You can say the same thing for any land transport you want to name.

The high-speed rail that is very popular in Asia (China especially) and Europe is almost all electric. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of high-speed freight trains as of yet, but there doesn't seem to be any technical limitations for why these couldn't be build.

For shipping overseas, well, some aircraft carriers use steam-based propulsion (via nuclear) rather than oil. So coal- or nuclear-powered freight is not inconceivable.

[CorruptUser]

To move the volumes on the ships that handle the worlds international trade requires oil.

You can say the same thing for any land transport you want to name.

The high-speed rail that is very popular in Asia (China especially) and Europe is almost all electric. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of high-speed freight trains as of yet, but there doesn't seem to be any technical limitations for why these couldn't be build.

Inertia. Even going 40 miles per hour, a 10,000 ton freight train needs miles to brake. 150 miles per hour on flat land and huge distances might be feasible, but that's not anywhere on the East or West coast of the US, where most of the shipping and manufacture occurs.

[Dauric]

To move the volumes on the ships that handle the worlds international trade requires oil.

You can say the same thing for any land transport you want to name.

The high-speed rail that is very popular in Asia (China especially) and Europe is almost all electric. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of high-speed freight trains as of yet, but there doesn't seem to be any technical limitations for why these couldn't be build.

Inertia. Even going 40 miles per hour, a 10,000 ton freight train needs miles to brake. 150 miles per hour on flat land and huge distances might be feasible, but that's not anywhere on the East or West coast of the US, where most of the shipping and manufacture occurs.

That's not really the issue, rather the question is one of applicability. Can the electric-drive technology in the high-speed trains be adapted to 40-MPH freight handling to dispense with the Diesel component of modern diesel locomotives? Electric engines allow you to choose from multiple sources of power, as long as you can run a generator off them.

I think the biggest issue there is how much track you can effectively power across the rural distances that U.S. freight lines are currently run through. I'm not terribly versed on the intercontinental aspects of Asian and European high-speed trains though.

[morriswalters]

Money. Plain and simple. Imagine for a moment the investment required to wire all the track in the world, assuming that the supply of electricity was available. The cost of freight would skyrocket. Trains were made the way they were because it was cheap, first coal and steam and then diesel electric. They are used in Europe but evidently aren't cost effective unless the line is heavily used.

Nuclear fueled ships. It certainly is being done, but would you care to compare the cost between a nuclear powered vessel and a diesel electric one both to construct and operate?

[Heisenberg]

Money. Plain and simple. Imagine for a moment the investment required to wire all the track in the world, assuming that the supply of electricity was available. The cost of freight would skyrocket. Trains were made the way they were because it was cheap, first coal and steam and then diesel electric. They are used in Europe but evidently aren't cost effective unless the line is heavily used.

Nuclear fueled ships. It certainly is being done, but would you care to compare the cost between a nuclear powered vessel and a diesel electric one both to construct and operate?

You're talking about one-time costs. And no, laying tracks across the United States was not cheap, far from it. But it was done because the benefits made it cost-effective. Stringing wire is far cheaper than laying wood and metal track, but it is an investment that either industry or government will have to make if trains are to remain viable (although I imagine trains are still far more efficient than tractor-trailers, so as fuel prices go up, diesel trains could become more cost-effective).

[morriswalters]

Maybe. But trains are fairly efficient as they are. Trucks will always be with us because they can go where trains can't, they are more flexible, and so on. Again it is about costs. Industry innovates when it pays to. They currently see no need to get off fossil fuels. And the world economy depends on it.

The fact that they can grow watermelons in California and then ship them is a testament to how cheap it is to move things because of the existing transportation infrastructure. This is also a good example of overuse of water. Consider this. Southern California is a net water importer. They either pipe it in from elsewhere or they make it. So they take their limited resource of water and grow watermelons. And other water intensive crops. And then ship it out, instead of growing things which require less water.

[LaserGuy]

Nuclear fueled ships. It certainly is being done, but would you care to compare the cost between a nuclear powered vessel and a diesel electric one both to construct and operate?

Well, pretty much all US aircraft carriers since the 60s are nuclear, and a carrier is of comparable weight to a cargo vessel, so, given the choice, the military seems to consistently opt for nuclear. For carriers (and subs), of course, the big advantage to nuclear is that they can stay at sea essentially indefinitely without needing to refuel. I honestly don't have a good sense of how they would compare in terms of cost if you were just looking at the engines (obviously a carrier is more expensive, but is also a much more complicated piece of equipment).

Maybe. But trains are fairly efficient as they are. Trucks will always be with us because they can go where trains can't, they are more flexible, and so on. Again it is about costs. Industry innovates when it pays to. They currently see no need to get off fossil fuels. And the world economy depends on it.

The fact that they can grow watermelons in California and then ship them is a testament to how cheap it is to move things because of the existing transportation infrastructure. This is also a good example of overuse of water. Consider this. Southern California is a net water importer. They either pipe it in from elsewhere or they make it. So they take their limited resource of water and grow watermelons. And other water intensive crops. And then ship it out, instead of growing things which require less water.[/quote]

I don't think it is about going off fossil fuels (and oil in particular). It's about making more efficient use of them. Yes, we'll probably never be able to completely get rid of trucks. But we can probably get rid of a majority of passenger cars, and move most of the remainder to electric. We can (hopefully) find a way to stop using fossil fuels to make fertilizers for food. We can probably find better ways to generate electricity and heat/cool our homes than burning fossil fuels. Stop using fossil fuels for things that we have renewable (or nearly-renewable, like nuclear) alternatives for, and focus on using them for things that we don't yet have a good replacement for.

And yes, we should probably stop farming crops in areas that clearly don't support them.

[Heisenberg]

If you look at the freight infrastructure in Europe it relies far more on trains and less on trucks. As a result, you see fewer tractor-trailers on the roads there. So yeah, trucks will always be with us, but not necessarily to the scale that they exist in America right now.

I agree that growing watermelons in California and golf courses in Arizona are grossly inefficient and pretty stupid. However, the fact that we can and do get away with these kinds of misuse suggests to me that we are not overtaxing the natural resources of the planet. For instance, wasting the Colorado River on pretty fountains in Vegas is abhorrent to me, but the fact that people aren't dying of thirst there suggests to me that there's plenty of water to go around. And honestly, even if there were people dying of thirst in Vegas, I wouldn't blame the thirsty people, I'd blame the rich dick spraying all the water into the air.

[morriswalters]

LaserGuy it is interesting to look up the number of commercial nuclear vessels built. Less than ten. And none in development. As with land based plant there is high resistance. And when your done with them you just can't take them to the breakers to scrap, plus civil liability if there is an accident. But my point is not that there are not replacements available if we needed them, rather that the replacements would come at a much higher cost. Or so I believe.

Heisenberg what makes you think we are getting away with it? Your car runs until it runs out of fuel. California is constantly engaged in legal battles over the distribution of water, not to mention international treaty obligations with Mexico. They are the only place in the US that I know of that create drinking water from seawater. The Keystone Oil pipeline is having problems in part for fears it could contaminate a major aquifer which itself is being used up faster than it is replaced. See this.

[maybeagnostic]

For instance, wasting the Colorado River on pretty fountains in Vegas is abhorrent to me, but the fact that people aren't dying of thirst there suggests to me that there's plenty of water to go around.

All those wasteful rich people fly around on their private jets, but the fact that Americans are still driving their cars suggests to me that there's plenty of oil to go around.

Water is much closer to a completely renewable resource but there are large areas of the world where clean drinking water is obtained primarily from non-renewable* aquifers. Besides, specific examples of wastefulness, no matter how ridiculously extravagant, are insignificant compared to each person in the US leaving the tap running while brushing their teeth or taking a bath once a week. Even something as simple as switching the shower head can reduce water use by 2-4 times without requiring any change in habits.

As for train transportation, it might not be feasible to have train lines connecting all major US cities but even transportation within densely populated regions (California, New England, New York) is pretty bad. Besides the US had an extensive train network running throughout the country so I find it highly doubtful it isn't feasible to rebuild something today that already existed in the 19th century. Unless high speed tracks are much more expensive to build and maintain- is that the case? I believe the reason is more that you can't rely on the free market to build infrastructure- that's really the government's function.

* Well, technically they do refill, it just might take a few hundred thousand years.

[LaserGuy]

LaserGuy it is interesting to look up the number of commercial nuclear vessels built. Less than ten. And none in development. As with land based plant there is high resistance. And when your done with them you just can't take them to the breakers to scrap, plus civil liability if there is an accident. But my point is not that there are not replacements available if we needed them, rather that the replacements would come at a much higher cost. Or so I believe.

This might have something to do with the fact that governments do not typically allow private exploitation of nuclear energy, rather than with cost. This may be more a problem of political will than anything else, but I honestly don't know. It's possible you're right and it is cost-prohibitive at the moment. As the price of oil continues to rise though, alternatives like nuclear ships will become more attractive even if they're too expensive now. Again, economies of scale will help too. If nobody has ever built a nuclear cargo ship before, of course it's going to be expensive to build the first one. The more that get built, the cheaper they become and the better the designs.

Unless high speed tracks are much more expensive to build and maintain- is that the case? I believe the reason is more that you can't rely on the free market to build infrastructure- that's really the government's function.

I think high speed trains can run on conventional tracks with minor modifications, as long as you don't use magnetic levitation (most don't).

[Griffin]

morriswalters,

Why do you keep going on about California and the southwest as if its somehow indicative of the planet as a whole? Yes, they are fucking up their water supply - this doesn't mean our planet is over capacity, it means its incredibly stupid to waste your water when you live in what is essentially desert or near-desert. But the US has enough remove and resources to move every single person out of the entire southwest and still support them comfortably. (we don't particularly want them up here, of course...)

[addams]

Maybe. But trains are fairly efficient as they are. Trucks will always be with us because they can go where trains can't, they are more flexible, and so on. Again it is about costs. Industry innovates when it pays to. They currently see no need to get off fossil fuels. And the world economy depends on it.

The fact that they can grow watermelons in California and then ship them is a testament to how cheap it is to move things because of the existing transportation infrastructure. This is also a good example of overuse of water. Consider this. Southern California is a net water importer. They either pipe it in from elsewhere or they make it. So they take their limited resource of water and grow watermelons. And other water intensive crops. And then ship it out, instead of growing things which require less water.

You really have a thing for these watermelons. Can we compare watermelons to cactus? I have seen wild watermelons growing in the Mojave Desert. We were a plant noticing bunch. We saw the plants from the car. We stopped and took a look.
People spit watermelon seeds from cars. Some of those seeds are doing pretty well. Setting fruit. Watermelon and cactus are pretty efficient with water.

If we are going to bitch about wasted water let us say nasty things about Las Vegas. They don't produce much tasty watermelon.