What is wrong with the world... and what can we do about it?

vexx32 · April 16, 2012

Alright. This is intended to be a debate thread of things that need fixing in the world around us. I\'ll begin with a general rant I\'ve taken the time to write up, and then the debate can ensue. Basically, every once in a while I get fed up with something or other and decide to write about it. My arguments are far from flawless or all-knowing, but they are as solid as I could make them at the time. I have not edited the rant since. It has been spoilered because it is so damn long.

If you wish to participate, I ask only that you read the entire thing (which, I realise, is quite lengthy) and that you contribute to the discussion in ways that are constructive. That is, argue calmly and pointedly. Do not flame or try to stomp out others\' arguments or ideas, but feel free to tell anyone (including myself) if you notice misreported facts and suchlike.

Now that I\'ve laid down the law here... I\'d like to say one more thing before I proceed straight to the rant and the ensuing debate (no, two things). First, this debate has previously been conducted on a small forum. My general way of responding to everything there was to quote everyone and reply in a single post. I\'ll do that here if it\'s at all possible, and if the post is too large to be reasonable (this happened on a small forum, so I predict it may happen even more so here), I\'ll snip out pieces that I am replying to, rather than the whole post, and if necessary just spoiler the whole post so you don\'t all have to scroll through it if you\'ve already read it.

Second, feel free to contribute your own thoughts about what\'s wrong with the world. This is the first of three rants I\'ve typed up so far. If you wish to view the others, head over to http://rantagainstsociety.tumblr.com/

That there is my own blog. It only gets updated when I get insanely annoyed at something or other, something which has (thankfully) not happened for a while. Even so, it makes for some very interesting debates, which is why I\'ve put it up here.

One final thing. Do not argue for the sake of it. That is, have an argument, and know what you\'re arguing about. Know the background information, to as much of an extent as necessary for intelligent discussion. Thanks

Also, if we decide we\'ve finished discussing this one, I may see fit to post another, in which case a copy will be placed in this post as well. I have three, but only the first is going to be discussed at this time.

... and the rant ensues:

The world is a strange place... and we have made it stranger. Lording it over everything else, humans are either the smartest or most abominably stupid of all creatures.
We believe that we know what we\'re doing... but no human can hope to understand the planet itself. We guess, we simplify, until we get it to a point that makes sense to us, and then we play with it, poke it until it can\'t take it any more, often leaving us more confused than we began.
People are often too obsessed with money -- people who work in advertising have a job centered around how to make their audience spend money, how to buy their products. People in the public relations departments have the job of trying to explain away the higher ups\' greed and appease those of us who are skeptical, as well as preventing us from banding together and deciding to tear it all down.
Humans have the capability for a pack mentality. Most of us love our individuality, but in order to accomplish something, we sit down and talk about stuff. The more effective plan of action would be to go accomplish it all as one, but we all go our separate ways and try and do what we can, often hampering the others of our group in the process. A pack thinks as one, and accomplishes a great deal. If the pack splits, the outcome is (more often than not) disastrous... and even if successful, never reaches its full potential.
Governments talk too much and are too afraid of what people will think in the short term to look at anything in the long term. When people invented cars, we all though 'Oh! How wonderful!' -- and now, we\'re thinking 'These things kill the planet.' We should have looked at what they do and puzzle it out before we abused it. We never live in the present, always looking at the future; but never far enough!
People who invented cars thought it was such a good idea; the people that came along after abused their ideas and tried to make money off them. Nobody ever looked at what problems these things might cause. We are too blind to negatives; looking at the upside all the time makes us blind to the downside -- that which offers the highest upside often delivers the largest downside in turn.
Sight is something we all lack. By banding together and just looking at things properly, we can see what we need to. Laws are overcomplicated and often hamper punishment of the perpetrators. Sure, we must be certain who did it, but there are other ways to ensure that than a thousand restrictions. If the penalty for murder was death, and the system of judgement more about finding out who did it than money, we would have a lot less murder.
At some point in history, laws and the judgement system began to be abused. Doubtless it all began a long time ago. If they were caught, they probably would have been put to death, or punished horribly. Some probably were. Many weren\'t. The result? Lawyers are more concerned about winning and their clients more concerned about beating the system than actual justice. This system is a joke; the people involved often have the resources to ensure that they win, and the person who is probably right generally turns out to be the person the 'evidence' stacks up against. Why? Because they don\'t have the money and connections to be able to create evidence.
Money has corrupted the human spirit; we are competitive, but in all the wrong ways. We compete for money, but the more we get the less we\'re happy. The more famous we become, the more harassed we are. The world is backwards and wrong. We all say we\'re trying to help each other, but most of us only say that because we don\'t want the common people making an enemy of us, because we still fear the power or single-minded cooperation, and we fear to use it.
Governments are the same. They fear everyone else, because everyone has their own say in who gets to be in charge. Again, it\'s more about winning and money than getting anything done.
I feel like screaming right about here. It\'s physically and mentally painful to see so much potential dashed on the rocks by the sea of our unselfishness. We waste too much of our potential.
Humanity needs to take one step to cut all this down in one fell stroke and build towards something better. We need to be less selfish. That\'s all. Having a sense of self is important, but never forget to share what you\'ve got.
If you\'re smart, help anyone that asks for your help or advice. If you\'re strong, help those who aren\'t. If you\'re tall, don\'t patronise shorter people, just help them. Short people are just as important as tall people, smart people as well as strong ones. We all need to know our own mind, and most of us do. However, we also need to be able to work together, to stomach each others\' differences and counsel the ones we do not like in why this is so. If you have extra food, don\'t eat it for the sake of it, give it to someone who does need it. There still won\'t be enough food for everyone; there are far too many of us.
Only by working together and thinking far enough ahead can we save us from ourselves. Our selfishness causes us to be short-sighted: we care not for what happens after our deaths, for we will not be around. Those who believe in reincarnation only care for the future in the belief that if they don\'t, they\'ll still have to deal with the outcome. It\'s like a self-imposed threat.
Yeah, I have a solution. Yes, it changes many things. YES, IT IS DIFFICULT. Nobody ever gets anything without trying. In order to change the fate of the world, much must be sacrificed, but much will be gained in return.
Yes, I am cynical. Yes, I am not easily able to be optimistic. No, I do not like the way the world is. Yes, I would love to change it.
But nobody ever changes anything on their own. Little by little, the world must change. If it remains as it is, nobody will ever be truly happy with the world. Instead, we find happiness in each other. What\'s wrong with that? Nothing. Nothing at all.
However, it is but one facet of happiness, and if the world was a better place, we\'d all be better off. Less disease, less plight. Nobody can honestly say they want the world to be a better say... but nobody wants to give up as much as it takes to achieve it. Nobody cares enough to do so. Even so, we must try. In trying, we will find a way. No one person must guide the rest after it begins... we all need to know the way for ourselves.
Cynicism is highly painful. Most likely, it\'s despised for its power to both destroy and create; one cannot come without the other. To create a new world, one has to be destroyed. The ultimate trade-off.
I realise how much of this sounds somewhat insane... but I suspect that may be down to the mental conditioning we all go through as we progress through society. We are taught what to think in school, and we either accept it or reject it. We rarely question that original decision again. If you constantly did, nothing would get done. When it comes down to it, our lives and decisions are governed by those that come before. If we make the wrong choice when first given a choice, it may chase us for the rest of our lives and we may never be free of it.
The problem? There is no right choice. There never is; only some options that are better than others. Nobody is perfect, we all know that. However, we are all capable of finding the best option at the time, and that is all we should do. We shouldn\'t look at the past and look for better options if we made a good one already, we should look at what decisions we can make now and judge for ourselves whether they are good for everyone... or just selfish decisions that benefit ourselves... because if they are, the good will never last, it will be hollow, and the backlash is often dreadful, in the end.
Karma, some call it. I call it logic. If you do some wrong to someone else, almost certainly you will feel some backlash. Every person is cared for by at least one person in the world unless nobody knows them. If you kill someone, chances are someone, somewhere, will hate you for it.
Do not use logic as an excuse for anything. Use no excuses whatsoever. Everyone has their secrets, but if you make excuses for them, they break and shatter like glass. If someone discovers them, tell them as much as necessary, but unless you really want to, tell them no more than that. Do not make excuses... we all do it, but in doing so we hamper our ability to learn. If we do not feel the backlash, cushioned by our excuses, we will never learn to do better in future.
I could say much more, and I probably should. This is enough. This will have to be enough. Actions speak louder than words, they say... so should I act, or should I wait for people to wake up? I do not know.
I know too little to make a proper decision. All I can do is make the best one that can be seen. That is what I will do. That is all I can do.
Yeah, I\'m cynical. I can\'t help it, it\'s part of me... but I don\'t have to like it. Nor do I. It is possibly the greatest curse I will ever know, save for one. A nameless curse, more terrible than all the rest. Its touch can mean death, or life. The journey under the curse is worse than anyone should have to endure, and some choose death instead. Are they right? I cannot know. Not until it is my time.
Much is unknowable. Much cannot be seen. That which can, is rarely good. The trouble is, we never look.
Dreams never came easily to me, I often saw nightmares instead. I don\'t know if I\'ll ever know why. These days, I don\'t even know if I still dream. If I do, they never stay in my memory. Perhaps I am too anchored in this world to find another. It may be a boon or a curse, I cannot say. Dreams that still remain often simply retell the future as if it has already happened, as if I were simply remembering it. How? I cannot know. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.
In this world, people have many notions for dreams. One is daydreams. Those occur often enough. Another is a goal of some form, a wish to accomplish something. As to that, I cannot speak for myself. I do not know what I mean to accomplish yet, but I sure hope it ends up being worth it.
The dreams I talk about tend to be the ones the mind offers up, the ones I rarely see at all. The future may be shown in the dreams, or the past. Both are often shown cryptically, but puzzling them out is like the word association game; follow the meanings until they match up with each other and make sense on some level. The future is almost always clear to me, although its often hidden away in my memory until the vent happens, and I realise I\'ve seen it happen before.
This is insanely long, and if you have taken the time to read it all, I am very thankful you have. Writing down thoughts is more infuriating than most would have you believe, but perhaps it is time I did.
But in time for what? Only dreams can say until time does the telling.

Let the Grand Debate (v1) begin!

Feel free to introduce your own ideas for discussion as well!

Johno · April 16, 2012

I could say much about what you have said (A good opinion article, by the way). However, it being late I shall content myself with a single point regarding a single point of your article.

Only by working together and thinking far enough ahead can we save us from ourselves. Our selfishness causes us to be short-sighted: we care not for what happens after our deaths, for we will not be around. Those who believe in reincarnation only care for the future in the belief that if they don\'t, they\'ll still have to deal with the outcome. It\'s like a self-imposed threat.

It may not be quite this simple. Many of our problems happen precisely because humans DO work together effectively, DO think ahead (far more so than anything in the animal kingdom aside from ourselves).

A city is like a hive of bees in that it is thousands of individuals who specialise at their tasks and contribute to the whole. Yet it\'s unlike the hive because each of those individuals have the ability to live solitary lives (theoretically) yet CONSCIOUSLY CHOOSE to sacrifice some of their individuality for mutual gain. By contrast, a bee is constrained to their role in the community. In 'Bee Movie', one worker challenges his[1] role; in reality that role is programmed into the individual in such a way that they can no more challenge it than you or I can challenge the fact that we must breathe air rather than water. A 2 day old bee cleans cells. A 10 day old bee feeds larvae. A 15 day old bee builds combs with wax. A 40 day old bee forages for food. A queen lays eggs, a drone mates with a virgin queen. That\'s it. But YOU have the ability and the opportunity to choose what role you will fulfill in your society.

A leopard thinks no farther ahead than its next meal. By contrast even the most stupid of humans are capable of at least a little forethought. No, humans think ahead very well. Thinking FAR INTO THE FUTURE (i.e. more than a year or two) is a drastically difficult thing, but humans would have to be the only organisms on Earth capable of even considering such a thing.

[1] Ironically; all workers are genetically female!

RedDwarfIV · April 16, 2012

I find it amusing that the development of Chloroflourocarbons [CFCs] as an alternative to Freon for fridge coolant stemmed from the belief that an inert gas, such as CFCs, would be better for the environment because it wouldn\'t do direct damage or be toxic.

Years later, we discover that these CFCs are still hanging around in the atmosphere, taking up space where Ozone should be, because they are so unreactive.

Sometimes we have good intentions and it goes wrong. A man who tried to make car engines rattle less by adding lead to petrol singlehandedly did more damage to the environment than any man before or since. On the plus side, he was successful in making less annoying sounding cars. We now have high enough technology to make not-annoying-sounding cars even using unleaded petrol.

Technology comes along and we make use of it. If we hadn\'t made the car, allowing us to move long distances quickly and effectively, we would still be in a similar technological position to the Industrial Revoloution - workers would find it difficult to get into city centres unless they lived in overcrowded slum housing. No lorries means factories must move their wares by train, so they can\'t sell as much - which makes for worse working conditions. And let me remind you, we made more pollution in the Industrial Revoloution than we do now. Now, we have laws on pollution, because of the mistakes we made.

To finish defending us, I\'ll move on to what we can do to fix some of our problems - starting with the eco-unfriendly car.

Hydrogen fuel. Its not that difficult to make, you can do that with solar panels and a mains tapwater supply. Many would say the problem with hydrogen is that we don\'t have the infrastructure. Truth is, no one has bothered implementing and setting up everything. With some enlargement of mains power cables and mains water supplies to petrol stations, you could have hydrogen fuel produced on site. That won\'t last into when hydrogen cars become widespread, but it would last until dedicated hydrogen manufacturing plants can be constructed, at which point the existing petrol infrastructure - petrol tankers, fuel pumps - can be used to transport and supply hydrogen fuel from the manufacturing plants to a petrol station. While towns and cities could easily have petrol stations routed their own electricity and water, with their tanks topped up by tankers, you could send the tankers to villiages that have less access to such developments. If said villiages are near streams or rivers or canals, however, I see no reason why they couldn\'t have some water diverted from those, and utilise solar power to generate the hydrogen fuel themselves.

And then Honda gets to sell lots of Claritys.

mincespy · April 16, 2012

Hydrogen fuel. Its not that difficult to make, you can do that with solar panels and a mains tapwater supply. Many would say the problem with hydrogen is that we don\'t have the infrastructure. Truth is, no one has bothered implementing and setting up everything. With some enlargement of mains power cables and mains water supplies to petrol stations, you could have hydrogen fuel produced on site. That won\'t last into when hydrogen cars become widespread, but it would last until dedicated hydrogen manufacturing plants can be constructed, at which point the existing petrol infrastructure - petrol tankers, fuel pumps - can be used to transport and supply hydrogen fuel from the manufacturing plants to a petrol station. While towns and cities could easily have petrol stations routed their own electricity and water, with their tanks topped up by tankers, you could send the tankers to villiages that have less access to such developments. If said villiages are near streams or rivers or canals, however, I see no reason why they couldn\'t have some water diverted from those, and utilise solar power to generate the hydrogen fuel themselves.
And then Honda gets to sell lots of Claritys.

The problem is not that we can\'t do this, but that we can\'t be bothered.

Awaras · April 16, 2012

I find it amusing that the development of Chloroflourocarbons [CFCs] as an alternative to Freon for fridge coolant stemmed from the belief that an inert gas, such as CFCs, would be better for the environment because it wouldn\'t do direct damage or be toxic.

Huh? \'Freon\' is just a commercial name FOR CFCs...

Hydrogen fuel. Its not that difficult to make, you can do that with solar panels and a mains tapwater supply. Many would say the problem with hydrogen is that we don\'t have the infrastructure. Truth is, no one has bothered implementing and setting up everything. With some enlargement of mains power cables and mains water supplies to petrol stations, you could have hydrogen fuel produced on site. That won\'t last into when hydrogen cars become widespread, but it would last until dedicated hydrogen manufacturing plants can be constructed, at which point the existing petrol infrastructure - petrol tankers, fuel pumps - can be used to transport and supply hydrogen fuel from the manufacturing plants to a petrol station. While towns and cities could easily have petrol stations routed their own electricity and water, with their tanks topped up by tankers, you could send the tankers to villiages that have less access to such developments. If said villiages are near streams or rivers or canals, however, I see no reason why they couldn\'t have some water diverted from those, and utilise solar power to generate the hydrogen fuel themselves.
And then Honda gets to sell lots of Claritys.

Hydrogen is NOT a fuel (that is, it is not a source of energy). You can think of hydrogen as a \'battery\'. It is a relatively practical way to STORE energy, but you need to spend more energy separating the hydrogen from water than you get burning the hydrogen. That means that you need another practical source of energy to produce it. Producing enough hydrogen to power all the cars in the world from solar power would require covering the area equivalent to a few countries with solar panels, which are (at this time) pretty expensive to make. Another solution would be nuclear, but it is not very popular at the moment. I like the things I am hearing about thorium reactors since they appear to be much, much safer than present ones with thousands of times less radiation and lower reaction temperatures. Bill Gates has invested a lot of cash into the development of thorium reactors. Also, Caddilac made a concept for a thorium powered car (appropriately called the WTF - World Thorium Concept) that could travel something like 30.000 km on 100 grams of thorium (presently, 1kg of thorium costs around 50 USD and it is thousands of times more abundant and easier to extract then uranium). However, I believe that the public will be against any sort of mass nuclear power generation since \'nuclear\' has become a word to scare children with...

Ascensiam · April 16, 2012

Since i am a communist as a person, my views have been pointed towards the \'\'solution\'\' for quite some time now, seeing as this discussion should have some input from someone like me, i\'ll try to explain my mindset.

Essentially, greed and economy is basic parts of human psychology, you may have figured that out, but the main problem is eternal juggling with the economy, allowing the free market means that at some point, it will crash, just like now and 1929 this will happen as long as the market is free. Now for the ideological part, it is my personal belief that all trade should be state controlled and stabilized, i\'d rather live in a economically weaker country with a tough unbreakable economy than a rich country that succeeds only because it can abuse poorer nations.

Now, i live in a very rich country, arguable one of the richest in the world per capita (top 10) and i hold these beliefs anyways, if it wasn\'t for China or Africa, my country would not have succeeded, we wouldn\'t have any slaves to abuse (they practically are with their wages and conditions) and our economy would fail, now, because a communist system involves absolute equality, it would be ideologically barred from abusing the poor, it is the worker\'s government, and it would trade fairly and organized with countries where abuse is not present only.

By now, the US has blocked socialism and communism for quite some time, how i percieve what is happening is that the population is waking up to the goodness of both, because essentially, this corporate capitalist greed opposition is the basic tenets of what communism opposes, and it is how Lenin forged the USSR.

I don\'t believe you can generalize governments like you do, however, my own is very capable of giving us what we want, i live in a welfare state and our conditions are like the Netherlands, i don\'t suppose you understand how the \'\'spirit\'\' is of the people here, but it is extremely open-minded and very different from other parts of the world.

I can see that environmentalism is the current subject, in this regard i can only continue to recommend other nations to keep trying, my own has laid plans for 100% self sufficiency with wind power in the next few decades, so we are already on the way.

Now for the final part, in which some may disagree with the results of the universities, but put it like this; My country is rated the happiest country in the world by a great deal of universities, how did we do it? We have a tax rate of 62%, we are strongly socialist, we have practically abolished religion, and finally, functioning equality.

mincespy · April 16, 2012

This is what is wrong with the world...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2129971/Titanic-100th-anniversary-Twitter-users-just-Titanic-really-happened.html

Ydoow · April 16, 2012

I\'d just like to throw in here that Hydrogen is produced and consumed in the refinery of crude oil to useable gasoline.

I don\'t see much of a reason not to more fully exploit Hydrogen as a fuel source, be it Fuel Cell technology, or some other mechanics.

RedDwarfIV · April 16, 2012

Huh? \'Freon\' is just a commercial name FOR CFCs...
Hydrogen is NOT a fuel (that is, it is not a source of energy). You can think of hydrogen as a \'battery\'. It is a relatively practical way to STORE energy, but you need to spend more energy separating the hydrogen from water than you get burning the hydrogen. That means that you need another practical source of energy to produce it. Producing enough hydrogen to power all the cars in the world from solar power would require covering the area equivalent to a few countries with solar panels, which are (at this time) pretty expensive to make. Another solution would be nuclear, but it is not very popular at the moment. I like the things I am hearing about thorium reactors since they appear to be much, much safer than present ones with thousands of times less radiation and lower reaction temperatures. Bill Gates has invested a lot of cash into the development of thorium reactors. Also, Caddilac made a concept for a thorium powered car (appropriately called the WTF - World Thorium Concept) that could travel something like 30.000 km on 100 grams of thorium (presently, 1kg of thorium costs around 50 USD and it is thousands of times more abundant and easier to extract then uranium). However, I believe that the public will be against any sort of mass nuclear power generation since \'nuclear\' has become a word to scare children with...

I wasn\'t aware Freon was a CFC. I heard it was toxic - something CFCs aren\'t.

It\'s nevertheless a better means of powering our cars over petrol. True, there are some people in a dry place in America working on a machine that would convert air into petrol, given that carbon dioxide and water vapour could be broken up and rearranged into a hydrocarbon if you had the means. However, that\'s a long time coming, and hydrogen is something we could move onto within years.

I\'m not suggesting it all run off solar. If you had fully read it [and I hope you did] you would have found the word \'mains\' before \'power\' or \'water\' several times. This means the National Grid for electricity in Britain. Solar is a nice way of doing it cleanly, but if you want quantities of hydrogen for a highly active petrol station, then you\'ll need the power and water to come from offsite. In my example of a quiet villiage, solar should be fine. And then there\'s the petrol tankers being used to carry hydrogen from seperation plants. Its possible. The seperation plants don\'t exist yet, but they could be built whilst numbers of hydrogen cars increase.

Also, its not a battery, and it is a fuel. If it combusts, which hydrogen does, then its a fuel. You can only use \'battery\' as an analogy. There\'s no reason energy storage can\'t be eco-friendly, if you do it right. And build lots of nuclear power stations.

Awaras · April 16, 2012

Also, its not a battery, and it is a fuel. If it combusts, which hydrogen does, then its a fuel. You can only use \'battery\' as an analogy. There\'s no reason energy storage can\'t be eco-friendly, if you do it right. And build lots of nuclear power stations.

When I said \'it\'s not fuel\' I just meant that it is not a net source of energy because, unlike petrol, you have to spend more energy producing the hydrogen than you get burning it, and that\'s without counting the energy needed to compress/cool it, store it etc.

RedDwarfIV · April 16, 2012

When I said \'it\'s not fuel\' I just meant that it is not a net source of energy because, unlike petrol, you have to spend more energy producing the hydrogen than you get burning it...

Nevertheless, its basically renewable. Petrol isn\'t. So hydrogen is better in that sense.

Awaras · April 16, 2012

Nevertheless, its basically renewable. Petrol isn\'t. So hydrogen is better in that sense.

In that sense, petrol is renewable too... As you mentioned, we could build factories that suck CO2 and water vapor from the air and create hydrocarbons (well, biofuels are basically this). I don\'t know how energy efficient it would be compared to hydrogen production, but it would plug in nicely into existing infrastructure.

Richy teh space man · April 16, 2012

Interesting reading..

Being a trade union rep I do understand about the need for solidarity and what it can accomplish when people band together.. one problem in that is peoples selfishness and the me me me attitude that seems prevalent in todays society.. people are happy to sit back and let the world go to hell because its not their problem.. a bit of a short sighted attitude as they don\'t tend to realise what goes on will affect them at some point..

As to the root cause and solution.. I believe capitalism is a major problem.. as someone once said the love of money is the root of all evil.. most people work for money to give themselves a bit of security and material comfort, others do it because they treat the dollar sign like some kind of religious icon, unfortunately these kind of people are looked upto by a lot of people who think they need to have this in order to be happy and successful, they don\'t.. but trying to get there is what a lot of people work towards.. even to the point where they\'re willing to trample others around them to achieve this..

Changing this mindset that a lot of people have would go a long way to fixing the worlds ills, however its a lot easier said then done.. maybe communism would have worked had it really taken off.. but like any noble human ideas they can become corrupted (think Stalin).. maybe Ubuntu philosphy..

The bottom line is unless enough people are prepared to stand up and fight for whats right then the world won\'t change.. to quote another famous saying all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing.. and therein lies the problem with todays ills, apathy and selfishness..

RedDwarfIV · April 16, 2012

In that sense, petrol is renewable too... As you mentioned, we could build factories that suck CO2 and water vapor from the air and create hydrocarbons (well, biofuels are basically this). I don\'t know how energy efficient it would be compared to hydrogen production, but it would plug in nicely into existing infrastructure.

No, we can\'t build factories. As I said, that technology is years off. Its still being tested with little machines fitted to parabolic mirrors that couldn\'t produce more petrol than would allow you to drive your own car. If you lived in a desert, because it needs a lot of sunlight.

And what you\'re suggesting would work just as well with hydrogen production.

vexx32 · April 16, 2012

Hmm. 13 so far. Yep, this should work well. Ah, I love a good debate! \'Kay, I\'ve spoilered my response to each user. Otherwise, this post would be supa long.

Johno:

I could say much about what you have said (A good opinion article, by the way). However, it being late I shall content myself with a single point regarding a single point of your article.
It may not be quite this simple. Many of our problems happen precisely because humans DO work together effectively, DO think ahead (far more so than anything in the animal kingdom aside from ourselves).
A city is like a hive of bees in that it is thousands of individuals who specialise at their tasks and contribute to the whole. Yet it\'s unlike the hive because each of those individuals have the ability to live solitary lives (theoretically) yet CONSCIOUSLY CHOOSE to sacrifice some of their individuality for mutual gain. By contrast, a bee is constrained to their role in the community. In 'Bee Movie', one worker challenges his[1] role; in reality that role is programmed into the individual in such a way that they can no more challenge it than you or I can challenge the fact that we must breathe air rather than water. A 2 day old bee cleans cells. A 10 day old bee feeds larvae. A 15 day old bee builds combs with wax. A 40 day old bee forages for food. A queen lays eggs, a drone mates with a virgin queen. That\'s it. But YOU have the ability and the opportunity to choose what role you will fulfill in your society.
A leopard thinks no farther ahead than its next meal. By contrast even the most stupid of humans are capable of at least a little forethought. No, humans think ahead very well. Thinking FAR INTO THE FUTURE (i.e. more than a year or two) is a drastically difficult thing, but humans would have to be the only organisms on Earth capable of even considering such a thing.
[1] Ironically; all workers are genetically female!
Thanks
Aye, we think ahead, but more often than not, we fail to envision any possible detriment that may occur. Even now, we\'re starting to realise that antibiotics are a bad idea, to take one example. We\'ve been using them for decades, without even realising we\'re causing serious harm to ourselves with them.
As to the hive comparison, there really is no choice involved. We\'re raised to think like that, to be part of the whole. We\'re raised to specialise in one area, so what else would we do? Sure, we can change what we do, but we\'re never free to do what we will. I can\'t walk into NASA and say I work there, to take a rather extreme example. Also, because of various laws, I can\'t go and be self-sufficient, because somebody owns the land, or there are laws protecting the animals I may want to hunt.
And... yes, humans are VERY capable of foresight. The problem arises when (as I said) we start to ignore possible negative effects. We normally do this because we don\'t like to think of what might happen if we get it wrong... but we really should focus more on negatives than positives. Sure, it\'s depressing, because negatives are so much more prevalent, but if we do we can prevent them from happening (or at least give it a good shot).

RedDwarfIV:

I find it amusing that the development of Chloroflourocarbons [CFCs] as an alternative to Freon for fridge coolant stemmed from the belief that an inert gas, such as CFCs, would be better for the environment because it wouldn\'t do direct damage or be toxic.
Years later, we discover that these CFCs are still hanging around in the atmosphere, taking up space where Ozone should be, because they are so unreactive.
Not true. They are only unreactive in the stratosphere. That is, they are only unreactive in the very lowest part of the atmosphere. Once they\'re up where ozone is, they become much more reactive, due to the UV light there. The chlorine in them is the main problem -- it is split off from the molecules (usually because of the UV light hitting the molecules), and then undergoes a process whereby it converts ozone into oxygen, without using up the chlorine. It acts as a sort of catalyst, increasing the rate at which ozone forms oxygen. Ozone is an unstable molecule as ti is, and will readily break down to form oxygen. This happens because it absorbs some UV wavelengths, which provide the energy for this decomposition to happen. That is how it protects us from UV. The oxygen will then eventually be broken down by slightly different wavelengths, allowing ozone to be formed once again, as the now-free two ozone atoms join onto an existing oxygen molecule. Basically, by breaking down ozone, CFCs remove half the shield, and the most important half -- since ozone absorbs th much shorter UV wavelengths, the ones that do the most harm.
Sometimes we have good intentions and it goes wrong. A man who tried to make car engines rattle less by adding lead to petrol singlehandedly did more damage to the environment than any man before or since. On the plus side, he was successful in making less annoying sounding cars. We now have high enough technology to make not-annoying-sounding cars even using unleaded petrol.
No, in many cases our intentions are not 'good', they are selfish or geared to wards making money. Sometimes they\'re just plain lazy, of sorts, geared towards making things easier for people without thought to what it might do to everything else. He realised people would be happier to drive cars if they sounded less noisy, because people do not like excess noise. Thus, in order to make it more convenient (read, 'conducive to laziness'), he made it quieter. In his narrowmindedness, he failed to even glance at what possible effects it may have had.
Technology comes along and we make use of it. If we hadn\'t made the car, allowing us to move long distances quickly and effectively, we would still be in a similar technological position to the Industrial Revoloution - workers would find it difficult to get into city centres unless they lived in overcrowded slum housing. No lorries means factories must move their wares by train, so they can\'t sell as much - which makes for worse working conditions. And let me remind you, we made more pollution in the Industrial Revoloution than we do now. Now, we have laws on pollution, because of the mistakes we made.
If we had truly learned from our mistakes, we would have entirely undone what we had 'achieved' during the IR. Sure, we\'ve made it a bit better than it was, but mitigation is by no means a workable solution if we want to stay alive... and after all, that is what people seem to focus on these days.
To finish defending us, I\'ll move on to what we can do to fix some of our problems - starting with the eco-unfriendly car.
Hydrogen fuel. Its not that difficult to make, you can do that with solar panels and a mains tapwater supply. Many would say the problem with hydrogen is that we don\'t have the infrastructure. Truth is, no one has bothered implementing and setting up everything. With some enlargement of mains power cables and mains water supplies to petrol stations, you could have hydrogen fuel produced on site. That won\'t last into when hydrogen cars become widespread, but it would last until dedicated hydrogen manufacturing plants can be constructed, at which point the existing petrol infrastructure - petrol tankers, fuel pumps - can be used to transport and supply hydrogen fuel from the manufacturing plants to a petrol station. While towns and cities could easily have petrol stations routed their own electricity and water, with their tanks topped up by tankers, you could send the tankers to villiages that have less access to such developments. If said villiages are near streams or rivers or canals, however, I see no reason why they couldn\'t have some water diverted from those, and utilise solar power to generate the hydrogen fuel themselves.
And then Honda gets to sell lots of Claritys.
... You do realise that actually splitting water to make hydrogen requires a rather large amount of energy. Sure, it can be done with solar panels, but unless they\'re super-efficient, it will be too slow to be of any real use. Not to mention doing it this way removes water from the Earth... and we\'ve already got problems with insufficient water in parts of the world. Start splitting water, and we\'ll start having drought worldwide. Once again, you\'re thinking too narrowly. Gotta take in the big picture, and see where one solution is quite the problem in another area.
I wasn\'t aware Freon was a CFC. I heard it was toxic - something CFCs aren\'t.
It\'s nevertheless a better means of powering our cars over petrol. True, there are some people in a dry place in America working on a machine that would convert air into petrol, given that carbon dioxide and water vapour could be broken up and rearranged into a hydrocarbon if you had the means. However, that\'s a long time coming, and hydrogen is something we could move onto within years.
I\'m not suggesting it all run off solar. If you had fully read it [and I hope you did] you would have found the word \'mains\' before \'power\' or \'water\' several times. This means the National Grid for electricity in Britain. Solar is a nice way of doing it cleanly, but if you want quantities of hydrogen for a highly active petrol station, then you\'ll need the power and water to come from offsite. In my example of a quiet villiage, solar should be fine. And then there\'s the petrol tankers being used to carry hydrogen from seperation plants. Its possible. The seperation plants don\'t exist yet, but they could be built whilst numbers of hydrogen cars increase.
Also, its not a battery, and it is a fuel. If it combusts, which hydrogen does, then its a fuel. You can only use \'battery\' as an analogy. There\'s no reason energy storage can\'t be eco-friendly, if you do it right. And build lots of nuclear power stations.
Aye, Freon\'s a CFC. And they can in fact be poisonous, but not to a large degree, since as I said, they\'re largely stable in the troposphere. If they decompose, then they form chlorine gas first and foremost, which is a real problem, but they thankfully do not tend to do that in the lower atmosphere. Also, we shouldn\'t be converting air to petrol. Why? Simple. Petrol releases CO2 as well as pure carbon and carbon monoxide when burnt, especially since in a car the combustion is never 'complete'. There\'s no easy way to separate CO2 out of the atmosphere -- it takes a lot of energy to do. We\'re just wasting our time with that. We shouldn\'t be trying to make more petrol; it\'s a serious problem. We should be trying to find better ways to do it. Even now, fracking is a problem all over the board. Ecosystems are endangered by it, yet we still do it instead of spending the money on better solutions. Humans are without a doubt, some of the most naive creatures to ever walk this earth.
Also, nuclear power stations... are NOT the way to go. Too unstable, too risky. If we can get fusion to a safe degree, then it\'s possible, but one tiny slip-up and they contain sufficient energy to turn Earth into a lava ball. In my opinion, this amount of energy should not even be necessary -- that is, there are too many people on the planet. If we had less people, we wouldn\'t have half the problems we do. Hydrogen separation plants would be a waste of time. We\'d be removing water from the earth... which will cause us all to be in permanent drought. We neeed every drop of fresh water we can get , and taking it out of the ocean is a bad idea as well -- we\'ll just leave a higher concentration of salt behind, killing large swathes of marine life.
Everything is interconnected, and we cannot ignore the connections.

mincespy:

The problem is not that we can\'t do this, but that we can\'t be bothered.
You are correct. We are foolish enough to think that it isn\'t worth the effort. In many cases, the hardest solution would actually be the most beneficial... but we\'re too much inclined to laziness these days. Everything we do is geared towards making things easier.

Awaras:

Huh? \'Freon\' is just a commercial name FOR CFCs...
Hydrogen is NOT a fuel (that is, it is not a source of energy). You can think of hydrogen as a \'battery\'. It is a relatively practical way to STORE energy, but you need to spend more energy separating the hydrogen from water than you get burning the hydrogen. That means that you need another practical source of energy to produce it. Producing enough hydrogen to power all the cars in the world from solar power would require covering the area equivalent to a few countries with solar panels, which are (at this time) pretty expensive to make. Another solution would be nuclear, but it is not very popular at the moment. I like the things I am hearing about thorium reactors since they appear to be much, much safer than present ones with thousands of times less radiation and lower reaction temperatures. Bill Gates has invested a lot of cash into the development of thorium reactors. Also, Caddilac made a concept for a thorium powered car (appropriately called the WTF - World Thorium Concept) that could travel something like 30.000 km on 100 grams of thorium (presently, 1kg of thorium costs around 50 USD and it is thousands of times more abundant and easier to extract then uranium). However, I believe that the public will be against any sort of mass nuclear power generation since \'nuclear\' has become a word to scare children with...
Yes, the replacement for CFCs is in fact HCFCs, which in turn are being replaced by HFCs, which are still something of a problem, so we\'re going to have to look for other things to use. Also, no form of nuclear reactor is ever safe. Ever. Yes, 'it\'s a word used to scare children.' So what? it should be. No matter what you start with, there\'ll always be some undesirable end product with that form of energy generation. The best way to do it is a fusion reactor, but we haven\'t quite worked those out yet. And anything put into a car needs to be foolproof. It needs to be safe enough that it will not release ridiculous amounts of energy and/or radiation in the event of a catastrophic collision. Neither fission nor fusion reactors can do that. They are too unstable to be used in cars, at least while people are driving them.
In addition, while hydrogen is renewable, it takes the same amount of energy to get hydrogen out of water as it releases when hydrogen is burnt. Thus, you may as well not even bother. It\'s the same with petrol. It takes the same amount of energy to re-form petrol molecules as is released when they\'re burnt. Slightly less in fact, because it is rare for petrol to be fully vombusted and thus all the energy is not released.

Richy:

Interesting reading..
Being a trade union rep I do understand about the need for solidarity and what it can accomplish when people band together.. one problem in that is peoples selfishness and the me me me attitude that seems prevalent in todays society.. people are happy to sit back and let the world go to hell because its not their problem.. a bit of a short sighted attitude as they don\'t tend to realise what goes on will affect them at some point..
Aye. I intend to have a contingency plan in the case the world goes to hell, but in the meantime, I suggest we all try to do something about it. Just be careful in what you do. Even the best of intentions can lead to quite awful results, so be very careful, and always keep an open mind and be open to criticism and suggestions. It is preferable to keep in contact with sensible people, who will let you know if you\'re doing something that could turn out terribly wrong.
As to the root cause and solution.. I believe capitalism is a major problem.. as someone once said the love of money is the root of all evil.. most people work for money to give themselves a bit of security and material comfort, others do it because they treat the dollar sign like some kind of religious icon, unfortunately these kind of people are looked upto by a lot of people who think they need to have this in order to be happy and successful, they don\'t.. but trying to get there is what a lot of people work towards.. even to the point where they\'re willing to trample others around them to achieve this..
Aye, all this can be avoided once we stop being so selfish and start sharing things more. If we ditch money and everyone helps everyone else, we\'ll find everything a whole lot easier.
Changing this mindset that a lot of people have would go a long way to fixing the worlds ills, however its a lot easier said then done.. maybe communism would have worked had it really taken off.. but like any noble human ideas they can become corrupted (think Stalin).. maybe Ubuntu philosphy..
No, Communism\'s ideology is fantastic, but it necessitates someone in charge to keep it under control. As long as that is true, it will never work. Mind you, I\'ve had a workable idea of mine own, but it requires that the societal group be very small -- around ten thousand people would be stretching the limit, really. It needs to be small enough that everyone knows everyone else and can pass judgement on everyone else where necessary.
The bottom line is unless enough people are prepared to stand up and fight for whats right then the world won\'t change.. to quote another famous saying all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing.. and therein lies the problem with todays ills, apathy and selfishness..
Yeah. That\'s all it takes. To sit here and do nothing. Y\'know, since everything in this world is geared towards making things easier for us... perhaps that\'s exactly what they think of when they invent something new, hmm?

Polecat Industries · April 17, 2012

Well, there is one thing I can think of. Commonly, I find kids aren\'t given a care in the world regardless to ideas they can come up with. I find that if a kid comes up with an idea first, then some popular mathematician comes up with the same idea, the mathemitician is given further credit. I have no idea if this has ever happened, but it could very well still. It\'s similar to Galeilo coming up with 'the earth is round' idea. The Christian church did not want to believe it so they did not. Anyway, what I am trying to say is that children should not have their egos massaged, e.g. they come up with some filter system for sewers and the city says 'why don\'t you try on small scale?' and it never gets further than that. They should also be given more credit for things they come up with, and stop being discredited based on age.

cardgame · April 17, 2012

Everything and nothing.

Rascal Nag · April 17, 2012

Titanic - The Final Word - with James Cameron - ENDING - Nat Geo (04-15-12)

I didn\'t watch this whole thing. In fact, I was just eating and it just happened to be on. They were closing up the show, I wasn\'t really paying attention to be honest. But the ending Cameron gave grabbed me, and hit so many nails on the head. I\'m glad I managed to catch this.

RedDwarfIV · April 17, 2012

RedDwarfIV:
Not true. They are only unreactive in the stratosphere. That is, they are only unreactive in the very lowest part of the atmosphere. Once they\'re up where ozone is, they become much more reactive, due to the UV light there. The chlorine in them is the main problem -- it is split off from the molecules (usually because of the UV light hitting the molecules), and then undergoes a process whereby it converts ozone into oxygen, without using up the chlorine. It acts as a sort of catalyst, increasing the rate at which ozone forms oxygen. Ozone is an unstable molecule as ti is, and will readily break down to form oxygen. This happens because it absorbs some UV wavelengths, which provide the energy for this decomposition to happen. That is how it protects us from UV. The oxygen will then eventually be broken down by slightly different wavelengths, allowing ozone to be formed once again, as the now-free two ozone atoms join onto an existing oxygen molecule. Basically, by breaking down ozone, CFCs remove half the shield, and the most important half -- since ozone absorbs th much shorter UV wavelengths, the ones that do the most harm.
No, in many cases our intentions are not 'good', they are selfish or geared to wards making money. Sometimes they\'re just plain lazy, of sorts, geared towards making things easier for people without thought to what it might do to everything else. He realised people would be happier to drive cars if they sounded less noisy, because people do not like excess noise. Thus, in order to make it more convenient (read, 'conducive to laziness'), he made it quieter. In his narrowmindedness, he failed to even glance at what possible effects it may have had.
If we had truly learned from our mistakes, we would have entirely undone what we had 'achieved' during the IR. Sure, we\'ve made it a bit better than it was, but mitigation is by no means a workable solution if we want to stay alive... and after all, that is what people seem to focus on these days.
... You do realise that actually splitting water to make hydrogen requires a rather large amount of energy. Sure, it can be done with solar panels, but unless they\'re super-efficient, it will be too slow to be of any real use. Not to mention doing it this way removes water from the Earth... and we\'ve already got problems with insufficient water in parts of the world. Start splitting water, and we\'ll start having drought worldwide. Once again, you\'re thinking too narrowly. Gotta take in the big picture, and see where one solution is quite the problem in another area.
Aye, Freon\'s a CFC. And they can in fact be poisonous, but not to a large degree, since as I said, they\'re largely stable in the troposphere. If they decompose, then they form chlorine gas first and foremost, which is a real problem, but they thankfully do not tend to do that in the lower atmosphere. Also, we shouldn\'t be converting air to petrol. Why? Simple. Petrol releases CO2 as well as pure carbon and carbon monoxide when burnt, especially since in a car the combustion is never 'complete'. There\'s no easy way to separate CO2 out of the atmosphere -- it takes a lot of energy to do. We\'re just wasting our time with that. We shouldn\'t be trying to make more petrol; it\'s a serious problem. We should be trying to find better ways to do it. Even now, fracking is a problem all over the board. Ecosystems are endangered by it, yet we still do it instead of spending the money on better solutions. Humans are without a doubt, some of the most naive creatures to ever walk this earth.
Also, nuclear power stations... are NOT the way to go. Too unstable, too risky. If we can get fusion to a safe degree, then it\'s possible, but one tiny slip-up and they contain sufficient energy to turn Earth into a lava ball. In my opinion, this amount of energy should not even be necessary -- that is, there are too many people on the planet. If we had less people, we wouldn\'t have half the problems we do. Hydrogen separation plants would be a waste of time. We\'d be removing water from the earth... which will cause us all to be in permanent drought. We neeed every drop of fresh water we can get , and taking it out of the ocean is a bad idea as well -- we\'ll just leave a higher concentration of salt behind, killing large swathes of marine life.
Everything is interconnected, and we cannot ignore the connections.

While you may be right on the CFCs, you have a skewed idea of atom economy.

The good things about hydrogen fuel and the CO2 conversion machines being tested are that they take the molecules out of the environment - then put them straight back again after we\'re done using them. Hydrogen, when combusted, mixes with oxygen to make... water, which comes out of the car exhaust as water vapour. Which goes into clouds, which becomes rain, which goes through the river, and back to the sea. I don\'t see where you\'re getting the idea that we might use so much water at the same time that we salinate all sea life to death. And with the CO2 converter, it takes CO2 out of the air, and the car puts it back. Its like growing a tree so you can use it for firewood. A lot of the CO2 trees process in photosynthesis goes into building the tree - when you burn the tree, the CO2 is released. If you don\'t burn the tree, it decomposes, and the CO2 is released anyway.

Complaining that humans are naive will not solve any problems, and it kind of makes people think that about you. Either that or it depresses the people with the good ideas when they are told it doesn\'t work because of \'common sense\'.

Your suggestion that there are too many people on the planet, whilst probably true, does not put forward a solution, unless you intended that there be some sort of mass cull. So what that we wouldn\'t have the problems if there were less people. The fact is, there are 7 billion people on Earth and that\'s what we\'ve got to work our solutions around.

Hydrogen isn\'t \'too slow\' to be useful. If it helps the environment, that makes it a better fuel.

Nuclear power - I love debates on this. So many misconceptions. In total, just over 100 people have died directly as a result of the failure of nuclear power stations. When compared to the number of people who have died as a direct result of failure at fired power stations... well, that number is significantly higher. You see, in the event of a \'meltdown\', a nuclear power plant does not explode in a mushroom cloud. The reactor vessel fails, and radioactive materials are released... only to be trapped in the containment building. Three Mile Island had one of these - no fallout. The Windscale incident was prolonged because the safety people thought it would be a good idea to try and put out the blaze with fans - thus blowing radioactive material out of a stack that wasn\'t designed to filter so much waste. Human error played its part in both of these cases. Chernobyl was caused by a pathetic Soviet reactor design without a containment building, having a new safety feature tested - by \'scientists\' who barely knew more than the manual told them. When the reactor overheated, they engaged the SCRAM - but because the reactor used water coolant, and the SCRAM moderator was graphite, the SCRAM rods exploded, the coolant evaporated into steam and blew the bloody roof off. Then there was a nuclear fire and Chernobyl was abandoned. Even so, only a few decades afterward, there is wildlife living in and around Chernobyl, thriving despite the radiation which, I might add, would only give you radiation poisoning now if you were to sit down and have a picnic.

Nuclear power is not inherently unsafe. It produces power very efficiently, and aside from the problem of waste storage it is the best eco-friendly source of electricity that we have. Not to mention, Thorium reactors would be even safer, be self regulating, and be even more efficient whilst being smaller, can use waste from other powerplants and do not produce waste that politicians believe might be used by terrorists. Also of note - reactor waste grade plutonium is not suitable for use in a nuclear warhead. Dirty bombs are a worry but they a comparitively small scale, and its not like governments just leave plutonium lying around for terrorists to pick up and walk away with.

I hope I\'ve brought some education to the masses.

Endeavour · April 17, 2012

I don\'t know if this has been brought up yet, but I believe the true reason new energy sources are not implemented on the level petroleum is not because the technology does not exist or the challenges of it too large. It is simply because the oil companies won\'t allow it. They have the power to lobby government to keep petroleum as the primary source of power. And until these large oil companies make the switch to new energy sources, the world won\'t.

semininja · April 17, 2012

Which brings attention to another main issue that this country has, which is the political system. I\'m feeling lazy right now, so I won\'t copy down the >page essay I wrote out of boredom that describes the reasoning behind this next statement, but this is my solution:

Require every eligible American citizen to vote, and ditch the Electoral College.

That means:

Politicians have to have a proper majority in order to be elected. Therefore, they have to have more moderate positions during the campaign.

Politicians have to keep that majority support if they want to be re-elected, so they have to take more moderate action during their term, and they can\'t waste time politicking.

vexx32 · April 17, 2012

Well, there is one thing I can think of. Commonly, I find kids aren\'t given a care in the world regardless to ideas they can come up with. I find that if a kid comes up with an idea first, then some popular mathematician comes up with the same idea, the mathemitician is given further credit. I have no idea if this has ever happened, but it could very well still. It\'s similar to Galeilo coming up with 'the earth is round' idea. The Christian church did not want to believe it so they did not. Anyway, what I am trying to say is that children should not have their egos massaged, e.g. they come up with some filter system for sewers and the city says 'why don\'t you try on small scale?' and it never gets further than that. They should also be given more credit for things they come up with, and stop being discredited based on age.

The thing is... children are brought up to think certain ways. In my opinion, this can limit their thinking. The younger they are, the freer their thinking. Children can see many things most of us miss completely. So yes, I agree completely.

RedDwarfIV:

While you may be right on the CFCs, you have a skewed idea of atom economy.
The good things about hydrogen fuel and the CO2 conversion machines being tested are that they take the molecules out of the environment - then put them straight back again after we\'re done using them. Hydrogen, when combusted, mixes with oxygen to make... water, which comes out of the car exhaust as water vapour. Which goes into clouds, which becomes rain, which goes through the river, and back to the sea. I don\'t see where you\'re getting the idea that we might use so much water at the same time that we salinate all sea life to death. And with the CO2 converter, it takes CO2 out of the air, and the car puts it back. Its like growing a tree so you can use it for firewood. A lot of the CO2 trees process in photosynthesis goes into building the tree - when you burn the tree, the CO2 is released. If you don\'t burn the tree, it decomposes, and the CO2 is released anyway.
Well, we need to take the water initially. Sure, it goes back, but that\'s AFTER it\'s been used. In order to make it work, there must be a tremendous amount of hydrogen stored, either by individuals collectively or the government (to be distributed) in order to start it off. This basically means that in order to begin using it, we must displace a certain amount. It\'ll go back into the world, but then we are again taking more out to produce more hydrogen as we burn it. Basically, this means that the 'displaced' amount will permanently be lost to the world, forever in circulation in engines.
So, yes, we will be taking a significant amount of water out of the Earth\'s own systems FIRST. Then, the amount of water remains constant as long as production of hydrogen is roughly equivalent to the rate at which we burn it. See what I mean?
Complaining that humans are naive will not solve any problems, and it kind of makes people think that about you. Either that or it depresses the people with the good ideas when they are told it doesn\'t work because of \'common sense\'.
Your suggestion that there are too many people on the planet, whilst probably true, does not put forward a solution, unless you intended that there be some sort of mass cull. So what that we wouldn\'t have the problems if there were less people. The fact is, there are 7 billion people on Earth and that\'s what we\'ve got to work our solutions around.
Careful with that. I was merely making an observation, as I see it. No need to start a mudslinging session. And no, there is no solution to such a problem, apart from a culling or some such, which no doubt just about everyone (myself included) is against.
The only thing is... if we don\'t limit our population somehow, we will exceed (if we have not already) our planets capability of providing for our needs. If that happens, many will die. We will all starve to some degree, some dying, others living. A bleak picture, no? But not the only possible future... we shall see.
Hydrogen isn\'t \'too slow\' to be useful. If it helps the environment, that makes it a better fuel.
Nuclear power - I love debates on this. So many misconceptions. In total, just over 100 people have died directly as a result of the failure of nuclear power stations. When compared to the number of people who have died as a direct result of failure at fired power stations... well, that number is significantly higher. You see, in the event of a \'meltdown\', a nuclear power plant does not explode in a mushroom cloud. The reactor vessel fails, and radioactive materials are released... only to be trapped in the containment building. Three Mile Island had one of these - no fallout. The Windscale incident was prolonged because the safety people thought it would be a good idea to try and put out the blaze with fans - thus blowing radioactive material out of a stack that wasn\'t designed to filter so much waste. Human error played its part in both of these cases. Chernobyl was caused by a pathetic Soviet reactor design without a containment building, having a new safety feature tested - by \'scientists\' who barely knew more than the manual told them. When the reactor overheated, they engaged the SCRAM - but because the reactor used water coolant, and the SCRAM moderator was graphite, the SCRAM rods exploded, the coolant evaporated into steam and blew the bloody roof off. Then there was a nuclear fire and Chernobyl was abandoned. Even so, only a few decades afterward, there is wildlife living in and around Chernobyl, thriving despite the radiation which, I might add, would only give you radiation poisoning now if you were to sit down and have a picnic.
Wait a moment. That attitude right there was what lead to people being stupid enough to build Chernobyl in the first place. That attitude of 'oh, we can do this' and 'not that many people have died directly' is, to be quite frank, very narrow-sighted (no offense). Radiation causes thousands of long-term and short-term effects, and remains for a very long time. That area is still toxic to life. The wildlife isn\'t thriving. It\'s dying, slowly. If not, it\'s just mutating. If you\'re going to say something like that, give sources. No source I have seen, recent or no, can conclusively provide evidence against the radiation being harmful to plants, animals and humans, while there are a great many sources detailing the dreadful effects of it. Consider all sides of something before promoting it. Everything has its own dark side, and nuclear fission is one of the worst. If you don\'t mind... how old are you, and where are you getting your information from? Because I\'ve seen swathes of information entirely disagreeing with you.
Sure, it doesn\'t explode in a mushroom cloud, but it can still explode rather violently if it isn\'t dealt with. In addition, the containment building cannot be counted on entirely. Radiation will still, in most cases, escape, particularly if the failure was caused by a natural disaster (such as the one in Japan last year).
Nuclear power is not inherently unsafe. It produces power very efficiently, and aside from the problem of waste storage it is the best eco-friendly source of electricity that we have. Not to mention, Thorium reactors would be even safer, be self regulating, and be even more efficient whilst being smaller, can use waste from other powerplants and do not produce waste that politicians believe might be used by terrorists. Also of note - reactor waste grade plutonium is not suitable for use in a nuclear warhead. Dirty bombs are a worry but they a comparitively small scale, and its not like governments just leave plutonium lying around for terrorists to pick up and walk away with.
I hope I\'ve brought some education to the masses.
'Aside from the problem of waste storage.' Yep. That right there is most of the problem. If it produces waste we cannot deal with, it should not simply be discarded as an 'oh well, we can work something out later.' That sort of atittude is, in my opinion, what brought the world to its current pitiful state. Faith in those who come after you is all well and good, but carelessness for something that could be deadly is quite foolish.
Sorry. I tend to get a little out of sorts when people start talking carelessly about things that can easily endanger millions of lives. No offense was intended.

I don\'t know if this has been brought up yet, but I believe the true reason new energy sources are not implemented on the level petroleum is not because the technology does not exist or the challenges of it too large. It is simply because the oil companies won\'t allow it. They have the power to lobby government to keep petroleum as the primary source of power. And until these large oil companies make the switch to new energy sources, the world won\'t.

And there we have it. Although both other reasons are also largely valid, in some cases. Any commercial giant wants to keep what they\'ve got. Thus, the first step forward is in taking them down... or at least, it\'s one way

Which brings attention to another main issue that this country has, which is the political system. I\'m feeling lazy right now, so I won\'t copy down the >page essay I wrote out of boredom that describes the reasoning behind this next statement, but this is my solution:
Require every eligible American citizen to vote, and ditch the Electoral College.
That means:
Politicians have to have a proper majority in order to be elected. Therefore, they have to have more moderate positions during the campaign.
Politicians have to keep that majority support if they want to be re-elected, so they have to take more moderate action during their term, and they can\'t waste time politicking.

How about this? Governments keep no secrets. Any information the public wants should be available. I mean, if people can\'t even know what\'s going on, the voting will be skewed and the politicians can manipulate people. This should not happen.

I live in Australia, but for America, this makes some sense. I will cobble together something different for you to ponder; a different way of defining societies entirely, although it necessitates small groups, independent of each other.

Awaras · April 17, 2012

Keep in mind that no fuel source is ideal, and they all have drawbacks - the product of burning hydrogen is water vapor, which is by itself a serious greenhouse gas. There is no telling what would happen to the climate if we suddenly start pouring billions of tonnes of water vapor in the atmosphere, but there would certainly be consequences. As for fusion, we have been \'almost there\' for the last 40-50 years and by the looks of it we might be 'almost there' for another 50. Also, fusion does not leave any radioactive waste but the walls of fusion reactors become intensely radioactive after a relatively short period of time, and would have to be disposed of periodically in the same manner radioactive waste is disposed of now...

I am having trouble discerning the truth about thorium reactors, but if the positive things i have been reading about them are true, the radiation released is orders of magnitude less intense than in standard fission reactors, the temperatures are much lower, practically eliminating risk of meltdown and radioactivity of the waste products drops below background radiation intensity in around 10 years. Another plus is that the fission products of the thorium reactor are supposed to be lithium and other rare earth metals that are used in modern electronics and which are starting to run out right now.

Nuclear power - I love debates on this. So many misconceptions. In total, just over 100 people have died directly as a result of the failure of nuclear power stations. When compared to the number of people who have died as a direct result of failure at fired power stations... well, that number is significantly higher. You see, in the event of a \'meltdown\', a nuclear power plant does not explode in a mushroom cloud. The reactor vessel fails, and radioactive materials are released... only to be trapped in the containment building. Three Mile Island had one of these - no fallout. The Windscale incident was prolonged because the safety people thought it would be a good idea to try and put out the blaze with fans - thus blowing radioactive material out of a stack that wasn\'t designed to filter so much waste. Human error played its part in both of these cases. Chernobyl was caused by a pathetic Soviet reactor design without a containment building, having a new safety feature tested - by \'scientists\' who barely knew more than the manual told them. When the reactor overheated, they engaged the SCRAM - but because the reactor used water coolant, and the SCRAM moderator was graphite, the SCRAM rods exploded, the coolant evaporated into steam and blew the bloody roof off. Then there was a nuclear fire and Chernobyl was abandoned. Even so, only a few decades afterward, there is wildlife living in and around Chernobyl, thriving despite the radiation which, I might add, would only give you radiation poisoning now if you were to sit down and have a picnic.
Nuclear power is not inherently unsafe. It produces power very efficiently, and aside from the problem of waste storage it is the best eco-friendly source of electricity that we have. Not to mention, Thorium reactors would be even safer, be self regulating, and be even more efficient whilst being smaller, can use waste from other powerplants and do not produce waste that politicians believe might be used by terrorists. Also of note - reactor waste grade plutonium is not suitable for use in a nuclear warhead. Dirty bombs are a worry but they a comparitively small scale, and its not like governments just leave plutonium lying around for terrorists to pick up and walk away with.

I agree with this completely. Barring a large war or a cataclysm of some sort, the population of the earth is not going to decrease significantly in our lifetime and we will need more energy in the future, not less. Looking on the whole, nuclear seems the safest option. I was surprised to learn that a typical coal energy plant produces more radioactive waste than a nuclear plant - all coal contains a small amount of uranium and other radioactive elements, and when you multiply that small amount with the thousands upon thousands of tonnes of coal a coal plant burns over the course of one year, you end up with a couple of tonnes of uranium that stay in the ash that has to be dumped in an ash pile or is released in the atmosphere...

Ydoow · April 17, 2012

Those thorium reactors sound too good to be true. Seriously.

The largest thing holding back any technology is money, it\'s always money. If you can\'t make a profit, investors won\'t invest.

I was leaning for hydrogen cell technology in cars, but someone raised a very good point of dumping millions of tonnes of water vapor into the air.

That would probably have far more severe and immediate repercussions than CO₂ emissions.

However, I don\'t see why it\'s not possible to collect water 'waste' and dump it somewhere safe, i.e. down the drain into city sewer system.

RedDwarfIV · April 17, 2012

RedDwarfIV:
So, yes, we will be taking a significant amount of water out of the Earth\'s own systems FIRST. Then, the amount of water remains constant as long as production of hydrogen is roughly equivalent to the rate at which we burn it. See what I mean?
Careful with that. I was merely making an observation, as I see it. No need to start a mudslinging session. And no, there is no solution to such a problem, apart from a culling or some such, which no doubt just about everyone (myself included) is against.
The only thing is... if we don\'t limit our population somehow, we will exceed (if we have not already) our planets capability of providing for our needs. If that happens, many will die. We will all starve to some degree, some dying, others living. A bleak picture, no? But not the only possible future... we shall see.
Wait a moment. That attitude right there was what lead to people being stupid enough to build Chernobyl in the first place. That attitude of 'oh, we can do this' and 'not that many people have died directly' is, to be quite frank, very narrow-sighted (no offense). Radiation causes thousands of long-term and short-term effects, and remains for a very long time. That area is still toxic to life. The wildlife isn\'t thriving. It\'s dying, slowly. If not, it\'s just mutating. If you\'re going to say something like that, give sources. No source I have seen, recent or no, can conclusively provide evidence against the radiation being harmful to plants, animals and humans, while there are a great many sources detailing the dreadful effects of it. Consider all sides of something before promoting it. Everything has its own dark side, and nuclear fission is one of the worst. If you don\'t mind... how old are you, and where are you getting your information from? Because I\'ve seen swathes of information entirely disagreeing with you.
Sure, it doesn\'t explode in a mushroom cloud, but it can still explode rather violently if it isn\'t dealt with. In addition, the containment building cannot be counted on entirely. Radiation will still, in most cases, escape, particularly if the failure was caused by a natural disaster (such as the one in Japan last year).
'Aside from the problem of waste storage.' Yep. That right there is most of the problem. If it produces waste we cannot deal with, it should not simply be discarded as an 'oh well, we can work something out later.' That sort of atittude is, in my opinion, what brought the world to its current pitiful state. Faith in those who come after you is all well and good, but carelessness for something that could be deadly is quite foolish.
Sorry. I tend to get a little out of sorts when people start talking carelessly about things that can easily endanger millions of lives. No offense was intended.
Well, we need to take the water initially. Sure, it goes back, but that\'s AFTER it\'s been used. In order to make it work, there must be a tremendous amount of hydrogen stored, either by individuals collectively or the government (to be distributed) in order to start it off. This basically means that in order to begin using it, we must displace a certain amount. It\'ll go back into the world, but then we are again taking more out to produce more hydrogen as we burn it. Basically, this means that the 'displaced' amount will permanently be lost to the world, forever in circulation in engines.

More than two thirds of the planet\'s surface is ocean, in some places reaching many miles deep. No matter how much hydrogen we find is needed for our vehicles, there aren\'t enough vehicles to make a difference. Compared to that, the fuel taken would be insignificant. Your point, whilst true, is practically invalid. And if it was significant, wouldn\'t that help combat rising sea levels? With the ice caps melting, water will be getting less salty.

Your previous reply had many a sharp barb in it. All I said was that you were not providing solutions, and you were giving less than adequate responses to offered solutions, which gave a naive impression. I do not intend to start a mudslinging session - I intend to point out that like myself, you do not have perfect knowledge, and in many cases your arguments were flawed. I used the same/similar level of criticism that you used for me.

Population limiting is difficult. In countries where it is a problem, it is very difficult to police.

What lead to the Chernobyl disaster was poor reactor design on the part of the Soviets. No one assumed that it was entirely safe. It was not a result of a stupid viewpoint, it was the result of a city needing a lot of power and a nuclear plant being the most efficient was of providing it. The Soviets just didn\'t put enough research into it. Also, failures such as Chernobyl have lead to the exemplary safety of nuclear plants today. Natural disasters are difficult, but the Fukushima plant is on the side of Japan that has the least tsunamis. it should also be noted that gas-cooled reactors such as widely used by Britain are less susceptable to flooding than water cooled reactors. Fukushima\'s containment building was damaged by hydrogen explosions. The reactor\'s primary containment was undamaged and there were no large radiation leaks.

Explosions in a nuclear power plant are never caused by the fuel having a nuclear detonation such as a nuclear warhead could have, they are usually hydrogen explosions or sudden increases in pressure. Radioactive material is more likely to melt its way out of a reactor than make it explode, and it is usually the coolant that causes explosions. Under standard running operation of a nuclear power plant, a containment building will contain fallout during a meltdown. That Fukushima\'s containment building was damaged was unusual, but it was handled, and less than a tenth of the radiation of the Chernobyl disaster escaped Fukushima. No more than 100 people around Fukushima are said to have increased cancer risk.

Radioactive waste is not an 'I\'ll deal with it later' problem. We have dedicated treatment facilities, such as Sellafield [ironically, a renamed Windscale] which process nuclear waste, and store it in a way safe for the environment. True, its still there, but if well maintained the site could keep the radioactive waste contained indefinitely.

I\'m 16, and my sources are varied, though they include UKTV History, Wikipedia, Bang Goes The Theory, TVTropes, BBC documentaries and numerous Internet sites.

You say my problem is blindly following people who say nuclear power is safe. I know the risks, I know the problems, and I know the scale of the problems. What I say is that your problem is that you are one of the majority who believe the ideas formulated by ecowarriors, politicians, oil companies, and Hollywood, who all for their own reasons are biased against nuclear power. Because these beliefs have majority, believers can use that as evidence. There is so much propaganda against nuclear power, and so few sources to defend it because the majority believe it to be dangerous. Germany had the highest nuclear safety rating in the world, and yet Angela Merkhel had them shut down so that they could build wind farms. wind farms. A turbine spends 90% of its time taking power from the grid just to keep itself turning.

I\'m not talking carelessly, and nuclear power does not endanger millions. More people have died from teacosy related incidents than problems with nuclear power.

And thorium isn\'t too good to be true. It was just research that was abandoned in favour of uranium plants so that the US could discover more about it for its nuclear bombs. Thorium has the added bonus that most of its waste becomes fuel, and what waste doesn\'t become fuel has such a fast half-life that it would be Low Level Radioactive in just 100 years time as opposed to 200,000 years for uranium waste.

What is wrong with the world... and what can we do about it?

Recommended Posts

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Join the conversation