You're a heretic, Fred, and you always will be. It's a badge of honor that should be worn proudly.

"Lawmakers and the public have unrealistic expectations about a lot of things. Even when lawmakers know better they help feed the public's sense of entitlement because making hard choices is hard, and not necessarily good for one's re-election prospects. "

It's a bit odd that although the Middle-East seems to be in the driver seat w.r.t. oil, they act (to some extent) as if they are the underdogs (i.e., terrorism). I don't mean to imply that all people of the Middle-East are terrorists, but it is short-sighted not to understand that this is a problem. Most of the 911 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, and S.A. has used much of their oil wealth to fund conservative madrassas worldwide.

How does this play into the game theory? Much of what the terrorists have done cannot be considered "rational" in any conventional sense, so I'm not sure how much help von Neumann would really be to this issue. Since irrational behavior is inefficient, I guess this means all this terrorism stuff is of long-term benefit to the West, though it doesn't seem that way at the moment.

There are valid comparisons between extremist Islam and the Nazi ascendancy in Germany in the 30s. Both are motivated by similar societal conditions. Add this to the oil issue and we have a strange problem indeed. In addition to finding alternatives to oil, we should probably dust off the "X Paper" (George Kennan) and consider how Cold War containment might apply to this situation.

Diesel engines can run on petroleum, biodiesel, any combination of the two, and/or methane.

Any internal combustion engine can be converted to run on petroleum or methane at the flip of a switch.

We need to mandate that all new vehicles sold in the US be multifuel capable. And we need to rapidly increase production of biofuels and methane. Methane is both a fossil fuel and a biofuel. Methane can be produced easily and cheaply from any biologic source---even sewage and landfills.

Even if the price of natural gas doubled---it still would deliver more energy per $ than petroleum.

We need to mandate new vehicles sold in the US be multi-fuel capable. Anyone can use any fuel they want. If the price of oil skyrockets again, then consumers have the option to use ethanol, biodiesel or methane.

Let the price of oil do what ever it wants to. We don't need it anyway.

Since 1990 world population has gon up about 1.3 billion. For some perspective, when I was born world population was was about 1.9 billion.

How is it possible that we cannot see that everything across the board is still getting worse with no realistic numbers in sight to indicate even a point of inflection?

Many people seem to take great solace in the fact that renewabe capacity is increasing as a percentage of the total. So what?- when increased coal usage swamps renewables progress in absolute terms.

"We need to mandate that all new vehicles sold in the US be multifuel capable. And we need to rapidly increase production of biofuels and methane."

One way to undercut the demand for oil would be to take this route, but what federal governement in the western world is going to do this? None, because that way lies election losses. The actions that "need" to be taken are not difficult to see, but they need to be taken by politicians...therein lies the rub.

China will take many measures that insulate her from the worst of the energy crunch, largely because they can, with their relatively centrally driven economy. But most western countries cannot. So will suffer. Your personal financial plannig should take this into consideration.

Paul

Jim, even Von Neumann recognized the unavoidability of 'bugs' in the machine. In fact he said something to the effect that no program of sufficient complexity (ie, not a "hello world" program) could avoid same. Terrorists are the bugs in the ointment right now. Their motivations may appear to be suzerainty for their religion, but in reality their button pushers are merely looking to supplant the current crop of kings with themselves sitting on the gilded toilets instead. The fools strapping bombs to themselves are just pawns in that game and are doing a fine job of removing themselves from the gene pool, unfortunately taking potentially good gene material with them.

I only see us as having two sources of energy: Sunshine (present and past) and thermonuclear reactions. We animals get our energy by making CO2 and water from carbon compounds. We get energy for transportation, generating electricity, and heating from making CO2 and water from carbon compounds in the form of fossil fuels.

All there is left to burn on this is planet are carbon compounds, our food and feed, biomass, fossil fuels. Everything else is already burned (oxidized). Wherever we look, wherever we dig or drill we find little that is not metal oxides in the form of many minerals - but essentially all oxides, much of it in simple compounds such as SiO2, Al2O3, Fe2O3, and of course water.

Carbon is a unique atom. It is found in every animal and plant cell. It is a necessary component of air. It exists in deposits of limestone and dolomite, and dissolved in the oceans. Yet it is a relatively scarce atom, about 99.9% of the stuff we have access to is not carbon. (Oxygen is half our stuff, enough to oxidize everything with some left over for air.)

So it is staggering fact that we find fossil fuels in concentrations we can use. But it is even a greater staggering fact that the CO2 we exhaust and exhale becomes carbon forever dispersed (at least in terms of hundreds of millions of years). Fossil fuels are inherently a one-shot deal.

Man's claim to new sources of energy is a list one item long. When you make an oxide you arrive at the bottom of the energy hill.

I think that new source you optimistically await is too improbable to consider, sorta like unicorns and griffins.

So the energy and water woes of this world are easily solved and solved for hundreds of years with technology we already have. But you have to build those geometric arrays called reactors and put useless lumps of rock to work.

Problem solved.

Malcolm

I took the kWh sold in the US in February 2010 and calculated that on a continuous basis Americans used 1500 watts, including commercial and industrial usage. Recognizing that energy is not used at the same rate 24 hours let's say the installed capacity needs to be, say 2000 watts per US person.

If we look at the world we are looking at 7 billion people. Let's say these 7 billion would use electricity at only 1/4th the current rate of the US.That would be 500 watts per person. Unless I lost track of one of the zeros this would mean we need 3.5 X 10^12 continuous watts. Or the capacity of 3,500 one gig nuclear plants. For prospective, the US, the leader in nuclear energy, has about 100 nuclear plants, most of them old. Rather than nuclear plants it is more likely that 7,000 coal burners will be projected - if we get that far.

It's too many people.

hallelujah, but how often have you seen even Pulsers recognize these facts. How about never?

And my slide rule did cost a lot more than five dollars.

Another fine example of ignorance AND stupidity was provided by Milton Friedman at one of the Nobel anniversaries. His contribution was that if the price system was allowed to work its charms, then population was not a problem. The REAL Nobel laureates looked at him in amazement, but as to be expected, they didn't say anything. What they should have done was to laugh out loud, and shout for him to _____ off.

As far as I am concerned, the price system should be allowed to work better than it does now. If it did maybe we could get rid of some of the political correctness and crank environmentalism that is causing so much trouble, but the population 'curse' would still be there.

While I can name Athenians of more than 2000 years ago. I cannot name any Jonesboro resident other than an elected official..

Our "founding fathers of the USA" were not just an avenge bunch of men. Instead, they were an extraordinary bunch of men. We had a tiny minuscule number of politicians who fathered what today is the longest lived political system m the world. Only the Swiss might have an argument.

Fred,

Methane will not reliably compression ignite in a Diesel cycle engine. The fuel charge must be "piloted" with a small quantity of a fuel which will compression ignite. Once the engine is operating, the pilot fuel quantity can be reduced to ~5%, but not totally eliminated.

I recall having pointed this out to you previously; and, providing references from multiple Diesel engine manufacturers. While someone might have achieved compression ignition of methane in the laboratory, achieving it reliably in a Peterbilt dragging a 53' trailer loaded with 80,000# of whatever up a hill at 65 mph is a totally different matter.

Ed

Don, you've been beating the population drum as long as I've known you, but haven't deemed to do anything about it. Don't make me post the picture here again of the sign that says, "Save the planet, kill yourself". I won't quibble with your math as presented, just your underlying suppositions. America consumes 25% of the world's energy, but likewise produces 25% of the world's goods and services. If there were the equity you describe, America's contribution would have to drop to its population percentage, perhaps 4%. I don't see much rural electrification anytime soon in subtropical Africa, central Asia and central India.

Clearly our energy consumption has led directly to our relative wealth on the planet. We are a first world country because our geniuses created a first world in the first place. Other countries were busy fighting their tribal wars and internecine squabbles. The literacy rate among Greece's non-slave population was quite high, and with the expedient of relatively great wealth coupled with idle, they were able to produce some lasting intellectual legacies. Jonesboro's residents might me more concerned with mundane things, like making a living, than to worry about solving the world's problems. In fairness you should pick a city like Berkeley, California and count up the luminaries contained therein. You might find it is a bit of a wash, and the brightest of the Greek minds would be astonished at what their modern counterparts understand and achieve.

When I look for dumbing-down of ideas, I need look no further than the political spectrum. Unfortunately, the voting masses are preferentially NOT educated, or at least not informed, otherwise there would be no such thing as incumbency. The plutocrats have long since learned that keeping the population ignorant and uninvolved is the primary road to keeping power. Remember the Roman's panem et circenses (bread and circuses)?

I'm expecting that next great idea not to come from our society at all, but rather China or perhaps India. They will soon have better schools, they already produce vastly more engineers than we do, their primary problems are corruption and immobile economic classes. In other words, as usual, the problems are political not intellectual.

Also while there is a lot of coal still in the ground I do not think there ios enough to run 7000 new coal burners for very long. Nuclear power on the other hand has virtually unlimited fuel supplies - certainly enough to run many thousands of plants for many hundreds of years.

Malcolm

Our "founding fathers of the USA" were not just an avenge bunch of men. Instead, they were an extraordinary bunch of men. We had a tiny minuscule number of politicians who fathered what today is the longest lived political system m the world. Only the Swiss might have an argument.

From that declaration I assume that you are an American. I do believe that the British Parliamentary system is by far and away the longest lived political system in the world having been around a few hundred years or more before the founding fathers were doing their founding. But since Americans are only taught American history I am really not that surprised accurate historical facts elude you. Believe it or not there was a world before the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July.

Besides you guys should really not have thrown all that perfectly good tea into Boston Harbour. Such a waste of good tea.

Malcolm

About Hitler and Switzerland. Hitler once said that he did not want to invade Sweden because of the "rifle power" of the Swedes. What a crock. But as for invading Switzerland, well, that could be...COULD BE...quite a different story. As you probably know as well as I do, nobody is certain as to how that kind of venture would have turned out, and armor wouldn't have had much to offer in those great ski resorts.

And Malcolm, this thing about the quantity of nuclear fuel is crucial. This is why I look down my nose at the half-baked energy and environmental experts running around the place. Clearly more renewables and alternatives are going to be necessary, but without nuclear in the background, they will under-perform. A brilliant Canadian - Robin Boadway - gave a tremendous lecture a few days ago in Uppsala. I really loved his math. What the other people in the room loved I don't know, but I got the feeling that if had lectured in Icelandic or Swahili it would have been all the same to most of them. Anyway, some day I am going to brush up my math (again) and look at this nuclear-renewables business. I wonder though if there are any readers for that sort of exercise

I think it is sort of a form of cheating to get out a history book once a discussion gets started so I won't. I'll just wing it and check later, but you were still highly invested in your King.at the time. And England (about that time the UK?) had their hands full with other military business lest we (the colonies) likely would not have won the war against a megapower..

Your system did evolve from way back to the Magna Charta, through Cromwell and more zigs and zags. I'm on shaky ground on English history but the American Revolution provided history with the first nation founded without any reference to a devine connection (hocus pocus) whatsoever.

As to that certain unplesasentness about the tea in Boston, I always think of my Orange Irish grandmother who when offered tea. " No, I aint sick."

.

Until very recently in man's history population was brutally limited by facts of Nature (Mother Nature is a bitch). For example When Europeans arrived in N America the population of the American aborigines was very low. Some estimates for the "lower 48" as low as one or two million Hard to believe but in any case humans were a very rare animal. (There are many counties, mere specs on the map each having more people than that today)

Why? While they knew about how to make people they didn't know how to keep people alive, produce food. Population control was imposed on them. Conception to adulthood must have been a rarity.

But these people didn't lower any water tables, didn't add a net molecule of CO2 to the air, didn't cause streams to be polluted, didn't fell forests, use oil, gas, or coal. They had no history, no arithmetic, never saw a wheel and with rare exception never saw a building. They had wars but their weapons were poor. If they had better they might have killed themselves off? Like an endangered spices they hung on. (Should these handfuls of ignorant and suffering people have retained claim to a continent? They had managed to over-populate N America?).

We have exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet Worldwide we are pumping aquifers lower, down year by year without any prospect of recovery. None. The fossil fuels that have allowed population to grow exponentially are in depletion stages - depletion is not in question, only the rates are in question. Food production is or has already peaked. Just a few bad crop years could result in starvation for millions forecasting the future.

Don is one of the few people who is willing to discuss the third leg, which is much like a "third rail". I would certainly agree that our current population is far too large for a "hunter/gatherer" society, unless we begin by hunting each other.

There are even fewer people who are willing to discuss all four components of the stool together. I guess maybe the message of no coal, no oil, no natural gas and propane, no meat protein, many fewer people and "Big Brother" is just too much to take. Better to start down the "slippery slope" without looking at the bottom to see what inevitably lies there. :-)

Ed

But this population thing is interesting and deserves a lot of examination. Malthus had people starving, but I wonder if it will really come to that. Instead they will be fantastic levels of frustration, and in some cases spasms of the same. And because I see so much of this frustration everywhere. I'm afraid I must conclude that the hunting of each other that Ed refers to has already started, although it is called something else. .

People far wiser than me (and probably you) have gotten this population thing wrong. Malthus wasn't a dummy, yet he is ridiculed because his predictions didn't come to pass. But Malthus (1766-1834) didn't anticipate steam power, which really didn't come on line until the 1820s. Being able to efficiently make use of the energy stored in coal and oil greatly expanded the carrying capacity for mankind, at least for awhile.

Many people now think that although we are threatened with a Malthusian crisis of a sort, it will be averted when the "next big thing" in energy is developed. Some people think this is nuclear energy. A problem with this is that unlike previous innovations which have carried us forward, nuclear power is not dramatically cheaper than the technology it seeks to replace. Nuclear power may prove to be cheaper than other strategies in the long run, but that is mostly due to the other strategies becoming more expensive (due to depletion or environmental concerns) which is not the same thing as a less expensive technology coming on-line.

With no new (and cheaper) energy system in the offing, this impacts dramatically on growth prospects. Check out www.theoildrum.com for essays on a future of low or zero growth. A strong argument can be made that our lives are made much easier because we live in an era of constant growth, at least for now. Without economic growth, economic constructs such as debt become more problematic to handle. Economic growth can also hide systemic ills. Ponzi schemes (which work fine as long as they are growing) are an extreme example of this, but more moderate examples can still exhibit this behavior.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say Fred, is that I'm not sure the future risk is starvation, per se. Rather it is the population levels make continued growth harder to sustain, which could lead to an era of zero or very low growth. The consequences of this are more likely to affect us than finding enough to eat (assuming one has the money to pay for food).

Bottom line, economic growth REQUIRES population growth to succeed. Or to bring our esteemed Mr. Ponzi back into the equation, the game works great as long as (literally) there's a new sucker born every minute. Countries with ridiculously high TFR's likewise cause themselves problems on a per capita basis, because there is only so much ability to absorb growth. Nigeria comes to mind as an example, and emails concerning shared fortunes are not what I had in mind concerning exports. As Benjamin Franklin observed, sex is fine, but should not lead to penury.

You likewise correctly observed that technological advances held Malthus' demons at bay, extravagantly so. Taking Mr. Reid's 3 legged stool into account as much of the AGW crowd desires, even if they're not willing to say so publicly, possibly supports a world population 1/100th today's. Possibly. While some may feel that is a utopian future, I'm more inclined to believe it is dystopian to the extreme.

"Ed. World government will clearly not be a stool, but have many supporting legs. Its the only way we're going to get through the next hundred years, so we'd best get started."

World government would be a "stool" which could not be picked up by its clean end. :-)

Ed

ROTFLMAO! Beautiful

About forty years ago we had 3.5 billion people, half as many as today. Then we had twice as much arable land per capita, our water tables were higher, CO2 levels were lower and we had far more oil per person.

Starting at that time programs such as India once had and China's one-child program applied widely could have been a solution. Now it is too late. Our civilization is now unsustainable. Our efforts ought to be in mitigating the effects of impending contraction of population and the economy, not seeking miracle cures.

Tadaaa, after 70 years they are all built. But wait, not so fast. Nuke #1 not only has to be decommissioned but replaced with a new one - and this has to be done every week, ad infinitum.

As if that is not bad enough the demand would have likely ballooned. Let's say population growth during these 70 years is only 1%, that is a lower rate than any time during the last 1000 years. In which case in 70 years population would have doubled to 14 billion (1.01^70 = 2.01) and we find ourselves worse off than when we began.

This is what I mean by "we can't get there from here."

As for Don's math, I buy it hook line and sinker. But in this large country with a population under ten million, many of whom would be highly educatable if I were giving the orders, it would be roses all the way.

What's the big enemy? Smart people who want to be dumb. That's what political correctness is all about.

With your Chicago background you no doubt were aware of neighborhood ethnic humor, extending across Northern Illinois and all Wisconsin. (Dago, Hunkie, Polack, Kraut, Olaf, etc. Ethnic/NY humor was the humor of all famous comedians (and nearly all comedians in the days of radio were Jewish who learned their trade in Catskills resorts.) I cannot recall people being offended.

Nearly all ethnic humor has some grain of validity. Italians bursting into song, which everyone found funny.

Do Swedes speak Swedish as wwell as they do English?

Brazil has.

Paul Stevens----" None, because that way lies election losses. The actions that "need" to be taken are not difficult to see, but they need to be taken by politicians...therein lies the rub."-------

If, by election loses, you mean the lose of campaign funds from large oil corporations trying to maintain their monopoly market status, I suppose you might be correct.

If you mean that they would be voted out of office by people who are angry that they voted for a mandate that made vehicles available to them that can be driven on the fuel of their own choosing---I don't think so.

Mandating multifuel vehicles would not cost any new taxes----in fact, considering the environmental benefits of biofuels, would most likely lead to a decrease in government spending and bureaucracy concerning environmental issues. Most people I know like to pay less taxes. If you mean that voters would be angry because the mandate gave them a choice of fuels to use-----why would they be angry? They can use whatever they want. Even petroleum. I never heard of anyone getting mad because you offered them a choice of chocolate, strawberry or vanilla. I think most people like to have choices.

To turn Sweden from a Fifth World to a rich country only took the arrival of the Social Democrats - who are NOT...NOT Socialists. But what is happening today is that prominent politicians and civil servants are selling this country out in order to get highly paid, non-taxable non-jobs out of this country, which they feel that they deserve because they speak English.

The prime minister today is a conservative and dumb, but dumber than him is the Social Democratic woman who might become the next prime minister. I dont vote in this country of course, because although I can, I am an American, and have never wanted to be anything else - although if I awoke one moring with a Canadian or Swiss passport I would not complain.

This thing of Fred's about people wanting to have choices- Well, you don't say.. The ignorant Professor of Applied Economics at Cambridge University thinks that rratepayers want choices, but in point of fact we want inexpensive electricity. I want inexpensive electricity, but almost as much for him to appear in a seminar room in this country, or for that matter to have encountered him in the alley in Chicago where a man who later became a respectable journalist mistakenly thought that he was going to give me a lesson.

Well, as a former Sargent in the cavalry, Missouri Militia, CSA---(Civil War reenactments)-----and history buff----I'd probably think a discussion of Napoleon's cavalry tactics at Waterloo was pretty interesting. Although, I'd probably want to brush up on the Battle of Waterloo first. LMAO!!!!

At least, far more interesting than gossiping about the private lives of celebrities du jour.

Cavalry guys gotta stick together---anybody that smells like horses can't be all bad. LMAO!!!

The world has had a series of national leaders who sought to establish a world government: Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Kaiser Wilhelm, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Adolf Hitler, Chairman Mao. Several of them had made significant attempts at population control as well.

"Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it."

And, while I was hacking out another article, I thought about those numbers of Don H. If he's right then, ceteris paribus, we can forget about energy and disappearing glaciers. If I were a young man I would get a good technical education of some sort, and head for Iceland. Why Iceland? Well, one of my students from there said that Germans who came there 500 years ago are still called 'The Germans'. so I guess that there won't be any problem with excess immigration. They also have free energy, and probably enough smarts to think about the global population problem as something that needs to be taken seriously.

True, perhaps. However, it is extremely unlikely that "the people" of these countries would have any more opportunity to do so than they have to actively participate in the operation of their own governments today.

Nice try though.

Ed

We can forgo or delay the inevitable by substituting other sources for oil (PHEVs) but that's mostly a stalling tactic. Perhaps the country that can do this better than others will marginally benefit more, but overall, it still looks rather grim.

We either need to figure out how to have a functioning economic system with low or zero growth, or we need to find a fantastically inexpensive alternative to oil (and probably coal) at some point in the very near future.

The best and brightest flocked to Wall St. because that's where the money is (or was). Buying and selling shares DOES do something (it provides liquidity) which apparently was better than manufacturing an actual good to be bought and sold.

The people that shipped their manufacturing overseas to save money saw the short term benefit for themselves. Never mind that they slowly eroded the jobs base of people who were their own customers.

Whatever happened to letting the market decide? And the market decided that Phd. level mathematicians should be developing split-second trade algorithms (I'm sorry, we don't need THAT much liquidity) instead of designing more efficient engines, turbines, nuclear reactors, etc.

Apart from finance, the remaining growth industry seems to be mega-retailing (Walmart) which is little more than a further push in the "race to the bottom".

No easy answers on this one.

That is exactly what engineers have been doing since James Watt .And we have known for over a hundred years what constitutes thermodynamic perfection and we have pretty much been rubbing against these limits for decades.

I am reminded of the rationale for horse racing. Society condemned horse racing as encouraging evil that damaged families as an excuse for a place to lose the food and mortgage money, places for strong drink and foul language. Sport of Kings?

Pre-automobile rationale was: Horse racing was to "improve the breed." The tactics worked, but no one now seems to remember why gambling at a horse track isn't gambling - it's improving the breed.

Today racehorse are bred according to computer generated stud books and algorithms, diets and training regimens are dictated and optimized by computers. Shoes are aluminum and they get state of the art supplements, massages and tack.

No one seems to notice (nor care?) but horses don't run any faster. Earlier, less informed, methods worked well. Nor would I expect engines, turbines, etc. to run more efficiently if only smarter engineers had been on the job.

I try to patronize local stores even when it is inconvenient, which it often is..

What I like the least about Walmart is their often obese clientele and deleted shelves. .

The tale about the head of the Patent Office saying everything has been invented blah, blah, is absolutely false. It never happened. A NY newspaper reporter who didn't stay for the speech made up this tale and it got published.

I was dismayed that Bill Gates irresponsibly perpetuated the tale in his book, so now there is no hope to ever kill it. I wrote to him about it and for my trouble got back a rather rude note from someone at Microsoft saying yeah, yeah, they knew about it and will delete it from future printings.

As for the thinking "outside the box" crack, for the sake of my blood pressure I refuse to make any more comments. I have already dealt with it far too often. Perhaps the expression's first use was cute and germane, wonderful. Now it springs up like dandelions and taken as a bon mot rejoinder to end further discussion.

For years I could make drink money drawing that puzzle on a bar napkin, and others like it. The fact is, people DO think INSIDE the box and their creativity is stifled. I admit the phrase has gotten out of hand, but the concept is still correct. Truly innovative ideas are just that, truly innovative. The rest are just polishing rough edges off previously innovative ideas and calling them novel "improvements". Maybe good enough for the patent office (notice I said "supposedly", I was aware of the misquotation) but not good enough to get us out of this rut we're in.

You two are both too smart to be sniping about nits.

Don, my comment about redesigning engines was not to be taken so literally. But near as I can tell, there are no Thorium reactors or IFRs on line at this point, so definitely still some work to be done.

But your drumbeat repetition about population is on track, and you are to be commended for reminding us about that.

Jeff, you are pragmatic and correct about economic growth being dependent on population growth, but how is this to be sustained in the long run? It is true that Malthus was wrong, but I'm not convinced that he always will be. To your pragmatism I would add that a "plan" is needed (now I sound like Ed...) as to how SGF (sustained growth forever) is to be maintained. I will be frank and say that I don't think this is possible.

Relax. Sounding like me, at least occasionally, is not necessarily a bad thing. :-)

You will probably survive the experience.

Ed

Malthus warned of the dangers of over population as starvation, disease, and wars. We already have maybe 1.5 - 2 billion people either seriously malnourished or starving - more than world population at his time.. We have many million of people HIV positive, and it is not yet clear whether that disease or medicine is winning. As to wars, I don't know how many are active today, five or ten? What I do know is that there are tinder boxes all over the world. Never before have we had countries lead by religious Zealots with WMDs. Tell me a better Prophet than Malthus.

If you read about the massacres in Rwanda, you will see that they were largely population induced. Too many people chasing too few resources.

I have such upsetting replays in my mind's eye showing the results of heaps of people butchered alive that I would prefer to think about gas chambers for relief. It points out the devastating fact that there is nothing man will not do to man. Today, and with enthusiasm. I suppose Rwanda would be a more humane place if we had given them guns in exchange for their machetes?

Sigh, I wish people still learned history, before we go and repeat it all over again.

Read Jared Diamond's book "Collapse". At least the section about Rwanda. The massacre was clearly motivated by population pressures. It's true that tribal histories played a role in how it played out. The Tutsis were the group that was targeted, along with some peaceful Hutus. But there were parts of the country that had very few Tutsis living in them. Know what happened? The killers found some other portion of the population to marginalize, and killed them (such as the elites) instead. Between 1961 and 1989 (about 30 years) the population more than doubled from 2.9 million to 6.9 million people.

I agree Yugoslavia worked much better under Tito. He never should have passed control to his brother Jermaine... ;)

I do agree with you that population is the major issue we face. Couple that with the desire for all those folks to want the unsustainable US way of life and you have the recipe for a very big problem. But all problems have a solution and there are a couple that come to mind to solve this one. We can engage in some form of population control which would invoke Draconian measures like one child per family (the Chinese approach) or wiping out particular chunks of people you don't like (Adolf Hitlers approach) or you can use the approach I favour which is to find ways to support all those folks in a good standard of living.

Unfortunately the latter requires massive amounts of energy. The former methods do not require much energy. So presuming you prefer the latter approach then where does that energy come from in such large quantities.

Engineers can design more efficient engines (making use of the energy you already have) and all that baloney but you can only go so far and thermodynamics beats you.

So the question boils down to what technology we have that can provide that kind of energy at a reasonable price that is not going to wreck our environment.

I only see one source large enough and that is nuclear energy While I am the first to admit that nuclear energy does have its problems- building the 3500 reactors needed is far better than the alternatives which is wars over increasingly scarce resources.

Personally I like to see people well fed and happy with their lot in life yet to do that for 10 billion souls is going to take all the skills we have and then some. Simple calculations are sufficient to show that windmills, solar power, more efficient use of energy are nowhere near close to being able to supply 10 billion people with the energy they need. Certainly they can help but they are not able to solve the problem. Only nuclear power can do it.

All we need to do is build ten times more nuclear power plants than we currently have and the "problem" goes away. I don't see why we cannot do that. Surely it's is better than the alternatives. Also nuclear power - if managed correctly - is easily the cheapest method out there.

Dramatic cost reductions will occur with mass production and standardization of plants and designs. For far too long the nuclear industry has been allowed to get away with one off unique designs. Every one is a hand built Lamborgini with high maintenance costs and high capital costs. Not a single lesson has been learned by the nuclear industry from Henry Ford.

Governments should force designers to select one standard design and build 3500 all EXACTLY the same. Then and only then will you see the price of nuclear generated electricity fall to levels where the power is too cheap to measure.

We need to assemble the best team of nuclear design engineers from around the world to develop the most efficient reactor to build and operate. Then build 3500 all the same.

The we need to assemble a team of fast breeder designers to develop the most efficient fast breeder to use the old fuel from the 3500 thermal fission reactors. The you have a limitless fuel supply. Recycling at its finest.

If the nuclear industry fails the public and continues down the road of one off designs then the starvation of large chunks of the worlds population is assured....or the next Hitler will emerge.

You pays your money and takes your pick.

Malc

Those who don't have electric service are not stupid, they live in poor economies.

I said my hypothetical 3,500 nukes would be built in 70 years (average of one a week,) I would hope that over the years there would be improvements, an evolution of the design. And the hundreds of plants around the world making the components would evolve in their manufacturing methods, materials and not make interchangeable parts throughout. Even Model T's kept changing until they were discontinued as obsolescent in 1927, replaced by the much better Model A..

It takes lots of money, time, transportation (best have a dock and a RR), skilled labor, fresh water (best have a river), and a grid to connect with. Even the water supply at a given location can require design adjustments that ripple through the design. The size of the cooling tower, the design of the water treatment plant, the size of the surface condenser. Is there a use for exhaust steam at this location?. The topography would often dictate different plot plans so unique piping would have to be designed.

But the point of my arithmetic was not a solution but the opposite, to demonstrate with numbers that it is too late for a solution. As I said, you can't get there from here.

Malcolm wrote. "But all problems have a solution and there are a couple that come to mind to solve this one..." I disagree. The beauty of the Laws of Thermodynamics is they keep us from forever trying to solve impossible problems. Somehow people get the idea that solutions and problems are created in sets. They are not.

When I was in Army OCS in the Korean War we were given a air supply problem. We were given a great amount of data, most was not relevant, but that's the way real world data comes in, and asked to calculate the number of planes needed to supply a certain operation. I didn't get even our typical 4 hours of sleep that night. Well, the problem was rigged. No number of planes could supply the operation and some of the planes sent couldn't get back. It was not obvious.

In my view one reactor per week is easily doable and I am sure that could easily be tripled without too much effort.

So 3 reactors a week and we can supply 10 billion people with no wars. Sounds like a deal to me.

Malcolm

And yes Don you are quite right that fusion power always seems 50 years away but that belies the fact that very great progress has been made in that field. When I was a student, holding a plasma together long enough to cause a fusion reaction was years away. Fusion reactions can be achieved fairly routinely nowadays. So now we know that we can indeed create fusion reactions with Deuterium and Tritium. Once the technologies have developed further DD and HH reactions will become possible.

Once we can achieve flows of protons then flows of electrons are also possible. So while it may be some years away, being able to create electricity without an intervening heat engine is most certainly possible.

Then who needs cooling water or cooling towers. Power plants no longer need to be sited near rivers or lakes or the sea and they do not need power lines hundreds of kilometers long to get the power to where it is required. They can be built where the power is required. The very low radiation levels (no radioactive waste) means fusion reactors can be sited anywhere. Couple that with superconductor cable technology that can handle thousands of amps through thin conductors and you have the makings of an energy revolution on a scale that makes the industria revolution look like a hiccup in history.

The multinational ITER (that our wonderfully inept Canadian Government threw away) that is now being built in Cadarache in France will develop the technologies to the point where a commercial fusion reactor can be built. We are much closer to building fusion reactors than ever before in history. The fuel is unlimited, there is almost no radioactivity and complete elimination of thermodynamic cycles is possible...if that is only 50 years away then I think that is great news. To keep us going until then a few thousand more fission plants is a small price to pay.

I can already hear the critics saying that there is not enough Uranium to fuel them all but there is plenty and that is without considering Thorium or re-using the fuel that still has most of the U235 still in it - about 98%.

Those who say the world is running out of everything need to take a good look at history. The world never runs out of anything - it always develops new technology. The only thing the world is short of is technology.

So population may be a problem but definitely not one that cannot be solved now and in the future.

Instead of being chicken little we should put our minds to solving the energy problem. there is enough brain power writing on this site to do that.

And besides who said mankind should be confined to planet earth. There is a great big universe out there people.

10 billion people - that's a lot less than one person per galaxy.

Population is not the problem. Lack of technology is the problem.

How about we train some more lawyers to fix that for us.

Malcolm

The bulk of natural gas use is to heat buildings and water. Solar thermal heat is ideally suited as an auxiliary "helper" system. Your furnace still does everything it has always done---coming on and going off in response to thermostat settings. The difference with solar thermal use is, your furnace or water heater comes on less often, runs less time and uses MUCH less energy.

If consumers have vehicles that can run with methane---and they install solar thermal heat to their homes and water heaters---they will displace the use of a lot of natural gas(or $$$ if they are using electric). If they then use this natural gas(or $$$) to fuel their vehicles, they will, in effect be driving their vehicles on free solar energy. Your home and water heated for free. Driving your car with what you did NOT spend to heat your home and water. Using techniques and equipment so simple and low tech, many of them have been in use for thousands of years.

This does not sound like a particularly complicated or expensive proposition to me.

When I wrote it would take 70 years to build 3500 new nukes at one a week I was doing arithmetic. 50 X 70 = 3500. I never suggested there would be a World Boss who could run such a project as if he were playing a board game..

Yet there are proposals posted here which seem to assume there is, or could/should be, a World Boss, accepted by all, (Didn't we just read about Rwanda here, and in the news North Korea, many among world-wide Islamic willing to die merely to keep us divided?)

Has the world ever been more divided, more vulnerable? How many wars today? 5?, 10? Who wants Iran to have nuclear bombs - seems nobody, yet few will even say so, much less act in any way.

Technology has given us exactly one new energy source (fission) since day one. How are the people of the world to respond to "we are making great progress" "perhaps in 50 years we might have fusion energy" and "in a hundred years you might get such a plant." So be happy and cooperate.

It's too many people and we missed our last best chance about forty years ago..

North Korea wasn't on the warpath. You can thank Condoleeza Rice and assorted crazies in Seoul and Washington for this new tension. The New York Symphony appeared in Pyongyang, and all an intelligent person had to do was to look at those high-fliers in the audience to know that they are not interested in any kind of war.

What you should ask is the following question: Why are our leaders completely and totally ignorant? First we get Bill Clinton, and then George W. 16 years of ignorance and occasional stupidity. What have the American people done to deserve this? Suddenly I find myself thinking of an Australian I once met in Sydney, who wanted the Japanese to take Australia during the war. I'll never forget the look on his face.

Solar heating is NOT what I'm on about. Solar thermal electricity is the one technology with the potential for large, low-cost peaking or baseload generation which can and will complement either fission or fusion generation into the long-term future.

As for your ecumenical pool game, I wish I had been there. But in the telling you used the word 'you" and "your" pejoratively several times, referring to me (or including me), I think. Do I get that part right?

Railing against stupidity and wars doesn't score new points.

I have since learned this is rather common reaction among young Germans and Japanese today, "Huh, what World War?" But they not only lost but have much that doesn't want to be remembered.

As for that concert in N Korea, I wonder what the faces of concert goers in their formal bib and tucker in Berlin would have told you before 1939? .

ASIDE: (The Japanese routinely, as policy, committed egregious atrocities in China and the Philippines too. The Bataan Death March is about as bad an example of man's inhumanity to man for no reason as you can find. Yet I have heard Americans who were alive at the time later excoriated for using the word "Jap." That was the best word used during the war years.)

The carnage in Korea was great. Without the American Army the war would have been over in the initial North's drive. American dead were "only 38,000" but we (and relatively token allies, so called UN troops) likely killed well over a million Red Chinese plus many "North" Koreans. The four MASH units and helicopters saved many lives that would have been lost in all previous wars. The enemy never reported their real numbers. (I came late and did not experience the worst of it.)

Note: The power of PC ! My spelling checker tells me there is no such word as Jap.

She left me with only slightly better than average abilities and motherless. Am I a victim?

You have written in this comment thread about the inevitability of both global governance and genuine democracy. I am having some difficulty getting my feeble brain around the concept of a democratic electorate with 3-4 billion eligible voters and no representatives. Presumably, it would require some type of leader; or. perhaps, merely a pollster.

My biggest difficulty is envisioning such a leader. All of the leaders of non-representative governments, in my lifetime, have been tyrants. Most of those I remember from high school history were as well. Do you envision someone in the "Great Oz" to Joseph Stalin continuum, or are you hoping for a Gandhi? I doubt you would be interested in a Dalai Lama, for example.

Maybe I too will be gone before it happens. :-)

Ed

Ever closely observe a modern person in say early 20's dealing with the world via text messaging on their cell phones? Its phenomenal, they're way beyond us. The people in many "developing" nations are now better mobile connected than those in many "developed" nations.

My numbers were challenged. As this had all came directly out of my memory I thought I had better check it out.

So, here are the numbers (of deaths) I just took from a Wikipedia site. US 36,940. Red China 100,000 - 1.5 million. South Korea 214,000 - 520,000. Civilians 1.5 - 3.0 million.

Note: After the Truce the Chinese & North Koreans released a report that 1.09 million of the enemy had been killed, including 390,000 US troops.

We have plebiscites every year in the (once) great state of California. In the June primary, there will only be five. At least two of them are sponsored by corporations that want to use the ballot box to give themselves some sort of preferential treatment. Proposition 16, a measure sponsored by PG&E to kill retail competition from municipal is probably the most egregious, besides being a poor business strategy from PG&E's perspective.

I'm not terribly impressed with most elected leaders and many of their appointees, but the genuine democracy of which Len speaks is much much scarier. Can you imagine the same people who bought homes they couldn't afford wrestling with some of the same economic and social problems that are confounding much better minds? I sure can't. Can you imagine the American Tea Party folks gathering a majority to cut taxes while increasing benefits? I can! "True" democracy requires a highly educated electorate, which we just do not have in most of the world. Representative democracy is very unsatisfactory but it's better than either a dictatorship (however I will run if nominated and I will serve if elected) or the likely chaotic mob rule that would result from making every issue into a plebiscite.

My wife and I have often discussed the system of voting proposed by British novelist Nevil Shute when he wrote "In the Wet". It's a good story and an interesting idea that we tend to favor even though we would not be eligible for more than two or three votes apiece.

As a Californian, I am sure you appreciate the importance of the wording of propositions which are the subject of plebiscites. Not only would this genuinely democratic global government require a highly educated electorate, but also a well informed electorate. That would require the existence of a functional, objective and analytical global media. None of those three conditions exists in the US media today, regrettably, no less on a global basis.

I am reminded of Herman Wouk's description of the US Navy in his play, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, as: "A system designed by geniuses for execution by idiots." I fear Len's genuinely democratic global government would become a system designed by idiots for execution by geniuses.

Ed

They're a little like utility tariffs. Read carefully at least 3 or 4 times and hope you understand the words by the time you're done. The implications of those words is a whole other matter.

"Sorry Jack, but getting an efficient democracy requires a special kind of intelligence."

Indeed it does. On the other hand, as messy as representative democracy is, I'd rather live with it's problems and inadequacies and complain than live in places like North Korea or China or Zimbabwe or... where dictators have an unfettered ability to make one's life miserable and one has few options, if any, to improve their situation short of leaving altogether, if that's even possible.

Fusion seems a long way off to you but 50 or 100 years is a blip in history. Firstly we know that we can fuse atoms together to create energy and we have already done it - albeit on a small scale. But we do know it is possible and that is half the battle. We are also quite capable and have the resources necessary to build 3500 fission reactors if needed. Perhaps they will not be built in North America since Governments here are afraid of their own shadow. But they will be built by those who desire to improve their lot in life namely the Chinese and the Indians.

You said technology has given us one new energy source since day one. Well that is some energy source Don. Converting lumps of useless rock into electricity is one incredible invention my friend. So you would think that we would be exploiting it to its fullest instead of wringing our hands and worrying about every what-if scenario.

Plus as Len said nuclear is not the only technology that can make a real difference. Solar thermal and solar electric will likely be part of the solution as well. Deep geothermal shows much promise also.

I have great confidence that technology will provide every person on this planet with a good standards of living - however many there are. Population is no big deal - provided you have the will to deal with it.

Malcolm

In earlier posts I failed to say that when I said "we" in our killing over a million Red Chinese and N Koreans I meant both US and S Korean troops. I had 5 KATUS and they were fine soldiers.

Thank you for your interest in my mother. Newspaper paper doesn't last 98 years, it disintegrates when handled but I know my at the time 10 year old mother gave one-child recitals in 1912 at both Unity Hall and Kimball Hall. Today there is a Kimball Hall at 445 W Erie. I do not know if this was the place but I think this was the place of some kind of organ society. (For those who might have been tourists in Chicago this is a few blocks west of the crenelated water tower you saw in the middle of Michigan Avenue.)

Now is the time for mitigation of our dilemma..

I too am puzzled that you do not understand we are far from where man has ever been before: 23 times as many of us consuming far more than that ratio of a mere thousand years ago which represents a diminishingly tiny percentage of man's history.

I think the way to sort out Malthus's fears versus reality is to live SOMEWHAT locally. If you get most of your energy locally (or at least within the bounds of your own country) then you are probably somewhat sustainable. If you are importing huge amounts of energy from outside sources, that's a potential recipe for disaster.

I've been giving suggestions to BP it will be curious how long (if ever) they take to respond. Not that I think they'll follow anything the great-unwashed have to say, but I at least had to balance the nuke the well crowd. I'm guessing everyone thinks this is a movie, albeit with a lousy plot and ugly actors... :)

Until 1000 CE world population had been about 0.3 billion for a very long time and probably never been more. About that time better harness had worked it's way from the far east. Europeans over perhaps 2 hundred years developed the horse color, perhaps man's greatest invention to that point. Yoked oxen disappeared and farm output increased greatly. So did the population. For the first time horses could pull heavy loads, much faster and much further than oxen. Man could drive a wagon, eventually a carriage, not just lead a plodding animal.

By 1500 world population had soared to 0.5 billion. (The American Indian never had the ox, let alone the horse didn't soar.)

Exponential growth had started and by 1750 was maybe 0.8 billion.and 1.0 billion by 1830. Straight up since then. Malthus with almost no data was remarkably prescient and for his efforts has suffered nothing but ridicule for two hundred years. If his warning had been taken the least bit seriously we would not find ourselves in the dilemma we face today. Hang him around my neck if you wish, warts and all.

The conspiracist in me would think that this highly interdependent trade is a form of control that is imposed on us by the powers that be, of obvious advantage to them, but of limited overall benefit to us. If nothing else, extensive trade mutes to traditional economic indicators of supply and demand, so we don't even have simple signals to modify our behavior. We just grow until the edge of the Petri dish is finally reached.