World population is growing 20 million people every 3 months

[K_V_B]

Originally Posted by Red Herring

It might be slowing in developed nations, but if you look at it historically, it's pretty easy to see the trend. Where it peaks and reverses is debatable.

1800. First time we pass 1 billion souls on earth
1950. 2 Billion
2015. 7.5 billion.

Took a LONG time to get to 1 billion, and no time to add another 6.5 billion.

Fact is: population growth is slowing everywhere. Not just in developed nations. And much of what we consider the "developing countries" is developing fast. The number of poor people is dropping rapidly.

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

That's an interesting thought - now that hybrids and all-electric vehicles have been around for a while, has anyone marinized a hybrid engine? Could offer the instant kick of an electric motor for manoevring and getting in and out of harbour, without requiring the massive battery bank of all-electric propulsion. But they're usually gas not diesel ...

I think the best one to consider for that conversion would be the chevy volt. It is an actual hybrid vehicle. Just change the gas engine on the generator for a small 4cyl diesel to run it.

[a64pilot]

There are differing types of hybrid, parallel, series etc.
A train is a series hybrid.
http://www.hybridcars.com/the-three-...ids-explained/

I won't go into it in this thread, we have many times, but except for very unusual circumstances, hybrid cruising sail boats don't work, don't work meaning they are less efficient than direct drive Diesel

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by sailnow2011

If more demand for food comes along, we will farm more land. There is so much land that can be farmed, both in America, and in asia, that is not currently farmed.

Really? Like clearing the Borneo rainforest to produce palm oil? Nope... they have already done that.....

[sailnow2011]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Really? Like clearing the Borneo rainforest to produce palm oil? Nope... they have already done that.....

I have driven over 1 million miles on American roads. So little open land is actively farmed, its not even funny. Then you have Mongolia, china, southern Europe and that is all open and unfarmed too. We could make more then enough food for many many more people. I think a nuclear war will break out in the next 50 years so it will not be a big deal anyway. We are overdue for a global war.

[DumnMad]

7 billion people sending nutrients into the sea means we should take a similar amount of nutrient out again.
Google world fisheries production.
The rapid rise aquaculture prodution says we can easily do it.

[Gadagirl]

I'm late to the game, and perhaps diverting back to OT from the original post. However, while reading this article today I thought of this thread. I Found it informative and it simplistically explains the arguments surrounding the energy debates today. Most of the debates are discussed here on CF quite often. I appreciate that it breaks down the explanations, arguments and solutions to layman's terms (my IQ ability ) I just wanted to share this

http://www.vox.com/energy-and-enviro...-energy-debate

sorry if I've diverted from the original topic but i do believe it's related to some discussion in this thread.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by sailnow2011

I have driven over 1 million miles on American roads. So little open land is actively farmed, its not even funny. Then you have Mongolia, china, southern Europe and that is all open and unfarmed too. We could make more then enough food for many many more people. I think a nuclear war will break out in the next 50 years so it will not be a big deal anyway. We are overdue for a global war.

That 'empty' country is probably already being farmed intensively.... at 1 sheep per 100 acres.....

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by DumnMad

7 billion people sending nutrients into the sea means we should take a similar amount of nutrient out again.
Google world fisheries production.
The rapid rise aquaculture prodution says we can easily do it.

I wouldn't count on that working.... google chile salmon disease and read all about it....

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...llions-of-fish

Poo in the Pacific doesn't automatically become food on the plate...

When the mackerel have all gone the salmon industry is stuffed....

[SF Bay Dude]

Originally Posted by Kalinka1

Yup. But it will probably the death of all the bees that will finish us before over population.

Bees are fine. Save the humans! (I am a beekeeper)

[DumnMad]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

I wouldn't count on that working.... google chile salmon disease and read all about it....

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...llions-of-fish

Poo in the Pacific doesn't automatically become food on the plate...

When the mackerel have all gone the salmon industry is stuffed....

There are thousands of reasearchers and Greenpeace folk and reporters who get their sponsership/finance by pushing panic buttons. Don't fall for the headlines.

Fish will come and go in various populations and areas but on the global scale their populations rely on plankton supply and plankton supply relies on nutrient supply.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

Excellent! We agree on something.

Here's another important point to consider in our situation regarding our solar installations: During the peak six production months, we live on our boat and aren't even present in our office building apartment to be a part of the 5-6pm peak users. So basically, we're supplying power to the grid for other users and not using it ourselves.

So you are saying net metering is a great idea because we are going to install kill switches that cut off net metering customers during peak periods when they start drawing on the system?

If that's the case, it's a totally different discussion. Let's get the legislation passed. I'll call my congressman.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

That's an interesting thought - now that hybrids and all-electric vehicles have been around for a while, has anyone marinized a hybrid engine? Could offer the instant kick of an electric motor for manoevring and getting in and out of harbour, without requiring the massive battery bank of all-electric propulsion. But they're usually gas not diesel ...

If you look at the electric boat threads, this has been beaten to death.

Cars:
- Might need around 50-70hp to maintain highway speeds.
- At low RPM, IC engines have low torque. Low Torque * Low RPM = Low HP so they need to put in much higher HP engines to provide decent acceleration from a stop.
- At low RPM, electric motors have max torque available, so a much smaller engine can produce the low end HP of a much larger IC engine.
- Net result is you can get the same performance in a car using a lower HP electric motor.
- Hybrids take advantage of this by sizing the IC engine only slightly higher than needed for highway speeds and let the batteries supply short bursts of power for acceleration. This allows the IC engine to be maximized for efficiency rather than for heavy acceleration.

Displacement boat:
- Acceleration is rarely a consideration as the HP to weight ratios are drastically smaller. Also the prop slipping in the water allows the engine to spin up into it's higher RPM, higher torque range where it can put out decent HP quickly. The electric motor will still beat it but only by a small degree compared to a car scenario. More importantly, it's almost unheard of to use max HP when docking.
- Unlike with a car where once you are up to speed, it's just a small amount of power to keep things moving, pushing a wall of water out of the way takes constant input of power. As a result, the IC engine runs 95% of the time in it's peak output range, so there is almost no gain to be had from switching to hybrid. In fact, unless absolutely ideal, it is likely to hurt as there are losses converting power to electric, storing it in the batteries and then returning it to mechanical energy.

[valhalla360]

If you are really serious about resource consumption, we can solve 70-80% of the problem within 2-3yrs.

All cars will be configured similar to this. I'm a traffic engineer and the average car carries 1.1 people.

I'll even allow for a gas/diesel version for a 50% tax surcharge if you need to go longer distances.

Transit and trucking would be exempt and on all but the smallest roads would use separate lanes.

Even the gas/diesel versions should get 80-100mpg and the production would use a tiny fraction of the energy to smelt the metal and form the plastic.

Oil consumption would no longer be an issue.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by sailnow2011

I have driven over 1 million miles on American roads. So little open land is actively farmed, its not even funny. Then you have Mongolia, china, southern Europe and that is all open and unfarmed too. We could make more then enough food for many many more people. . . .

We are not as "big" as we imagine ourselves. It's true that we've raped the planet in many ways and left a lot of destruction, but you can hardly even see anything of us, from space.

How "big" are we?

All of humanity comprises about 100 million tons of dry biomass, or less than 0.02% of 560 billion tons total global biomass. "But wait!", you may say -- we are apex predators -- what about all the organisms we eat?

Ok, let's throw in:

Domestic animals 700 million tons
Crops 2 billion tons
For a total, with us humans, of 2.8 billion tons, or 0.5% of total global biomass.


So we, together with all the animals and crops which feed us, amount to only about 0.5% of global biomass. Add 10% to that -- so .7 billion people and all the crops and animals to feed them -- and it's still about 0.5% -- a rounding error. We are really not nearly as big as we think.


We should manage land better (far better), and we should pollute less. But Earth is a pretty big place. We are in a stage of development of mankind where people are moving to cities and out of the countryside. Less and less land is needed for living, even as the population continues to grow. Less and less land is under cultivation as efficiency of agriculture improves. With population peaking fairly soon (the only controversy is about when this might happen, +/- 30 years or so), there is just no way we will get anywhere near to running out of space, either for us, or for all the crops and animals and whatnot we need.

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