Debate Diseases - Modern Medicine and Overpopulation

You're an idiot.

1) There is nothing to back up. You made a random claim. Support it.

2) Oh the irony.

 

What? I said you didn't back up your statement... you know YOUR random claim that started this whole stupid thing.
and Oh the irony to you saying that since you told me and HPM how stuff like that was exactly wrong. And ooh you numbered them for me. Stop posting in all the debate threads seriously you make them all worse with stupid statements like the one you said here.

 

May I please employ that the two of you take your flamewar too private messaging where it won't derail the discussion into a festering pit of insults?

 

Definition of overpopulation, courtesy of dictionary.com, "to fill with an excessive number of people, straining available resources and facilities."

This is an excellent example of the current state of our Earth. This can be traced back to the 19th century when the boom of the industrial age began and we started to use natural resources more than ever, but only now are we feeling its effects. Let's also take a look at our school system. I live in the United States, so I don't know how it is in other countries but next year the average class size will be 40 students, an increase since last year (33-35). All around us our population is increasing exponentially, with no end in sight. We could just learn to colonize other planets and have people move there, but then the population will just increase at an even faster rate.

You are only attributing overpopulation to living space. Overpopulation can be defined from many other factors (such as the one in the definition above). And it wouldn't matter if China, India, or Japan took over other territories, it would just mean another country would get land taken away from them, making the size of their country smaller, which would in turn increase the population density in their country.There is only a set amount of land in the world and countries have control of every bit of it, well except Antarctica (a desirable place to live).

 

I think we should:

1. Cure diseases with absolutely no thought of letting one run it's course to curb our overpopulation issue.

2. Spend more research money and time on space travel and conceptual colonization. If we don't get off this planet eventually we will run out of resources or our sun will die killing us anyway. If we don't leave we will not survive.

3. Use condoms and be generally more mindful of the enormity of the decision to bring another life onto this planet.

4. Acknowledge the problem. aMoeba, you always amaze me with the stances you take in this great debate forum. Overpopulation is more a of a problem of insufficient resources than it is of land mass or physical space. Your scenario of being able to fit(with space to lay down) every person in the world into the state of Florida is not relevant to this debate. Whether it is true or not, it does not address the real issues that countries are facing all over the globe. Too many people and not enough to eat or drink. There is not an unlimited supply of fossil fuel on this planet and the more the population grows the faster what is left dwindles. Please can we start the debate by acknowledging the problem?

 

1) I posted my opinion. You got really fussy about it. Calm down.

2) I'm sorry, but I atleast post something that makes sense unlike this sentence:

Please, just shut up. You're an idiot. No offense.

Its not like I didn't bother addressing resources, its because the people who bothered to reply to me didn't mention it. Until now, at least. It is true that the world has been experiencing a population increase that began in the eighteenth century. Population rose six-fold in the next 200 years. But this is an increase not explosion because it has been accompanied, and in large part made possible, by a productivity explosion, a resource explosion, a food explosion, an information explosion, a communications explosion, a science explosion, and a medical explosion. The result is that the six-fold increase in world population is dwarfed by the eighty-fold increase in world output during the same 200 year period.

We are not running out of resources. The problem with the whole "running out of resources" theory is that we base resources to run out in so and so amount of time from now but we don't take technology's advances into account.

 

Yes, we can make technological advances that steer us off the addiction of fossil fuels. But seriously, mankind is not keen on taking the moral high ground at the expense of its members (my opinion). We need some kind of trigger or event to push us on the right path (something like the discovery of global warming perhaps?). We have the technology Right Now to make the whole world environmentally friendly with wind, solar, water, etc power. The problem with applying this to real life is that we have to look at the economic stresses this would cause on society. The application of environmentally friendly power generators could hurt us more than it can help us. Not to say these new forms of fuels are just plain harmful. We can apply this technology over a matter of time and "ween" the world off its fossil fuel addiction, but until then, we will just be stuck sucking up fossil fuels.

 

1) You fail to prove an example that relates to earth. Carrying capacity is obvious enough, and I already stated earlier we have more than enough.

2) Notice: "without" coal and oil. Then 2 billion. What was even the point of saying that? "When" we run out of fossil fuels doesn't have anything to do with what I said. If you haven't noticed I said resources multiplied more than people.

3) Oh, please. I listened to him loud and clear, he just fails to argue properly. Stop stepping on my toes! It renders your arguments useless.

 

1) And I addressed the second point.

2) Hybrid fuel efficient vehicles. I'm pretty sure Obama wanted to dedicate 8 or so billion to finding other fuel resources. I remember a few years back a man invented a car running on water, and it didn't go anywhere. I think a year or two ago he got arrested, for God knows what. Well, GM is bankrupt now, that saves us some fuel.

3) ...?

4) It was a joke. I didn't try to steal your argument, and the reason I left out that part is because I didn't bother looking for it, I just typed what I remembered from it.

 

uninformed

Hybrid Fuel vehicles still burn gasoline and still have harmful emissions. Obama has pledged to spend 150 billion on alternative energy sources over the next 8 years. There is not and never has been any water powered car. We don't have that technology. There was a guy who claimed to have invented a water powered car, but was uncovered as a fraud. You seriously believe anything you hear and repeat it in debates even when it is clear you have no place talking about this subject. Your knowledge of resources, overpopulation, and technology is uninformed and would be highly offensive to anyone who is actually living in a place in the world where these problems are real.

 

You're acting as if its still bad that we have to use fuel for cars. We're ALWAYS going to use something for fuel.

There has been a water powered car. I've seen videos. Don't run your mouth.

I also love how you address my minor points which weren't really meant to be debated about and you completely ignore the resource explosion, all you do is recognize the people explosion.

 

"Water powered cars" are misleading. Really they're hydrogen powered cars, just we use electrolysis on the water to split it into Oxygen and Hydrogen, which we can then burn to turn them back into water and release a bit of energy.

Its a cycle:

1. Start with electricity and water.
2. Water splits into H and O2
3. Electricity can spark the H and O2 to burn(well, explode more accurately).
4. The explosion's heat and kinetic energy is harnessed to drive an engine.
5. Engine runs the car's tires and such, as well as generates more electricity.
6. H and O2 burning combines them back into water.
7. Back to electricity and water again.

The problem is inefficiency and thermodynamics. Kinetic energy is lost to heat via friction, and heat is lost through any insulation you might apply out into the atmosphere. Plus, if you're using this process to drive a car you're losing energy that way too. The cycle can't go forever without outside energy input from a battery or solar panel or something, so the water isn't the true fuel source, whatever you used to generate electricity is.

Basically once your car is out of energy, you can't just pour in another bottle of water and expect it to run, because if the system is completely sealed, you've got the same amount of water you started with.

The "water powered car" has potential to run longer than just a battery powered car would, if we make the process more efficient, but storage of hydrogen is dangerous, and the inefficiencies kill the technology as it currently stands. And water powered cars still need their electricity from somewhere, just the fuel problem shifts from the automobiles themselves over to the power plants.

 

This thread isn't about Cars.... get back On-topic

 

Its a thread about overpopulation, part of which involves our growing fuel needs conflicting with dwindling fuel supplies.

I can Capitalize random words too... by the Way.

 

Support

Videos aren't exactly evidence of the revolutionary technology you are claiming exists today.

I'm almost positive you are talking about Stanley Meyer's(Stanley Meyer's Bio - Water Fuel Cell) claimed invention of the Water Powered Car.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UooJ7OvsU58&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a74uarqap2E


What he is talking about is basically a perpetual motion machine. He was a fraud and the product was a fraud. With current forms of electrolysis cells you have to put nearly 3 times as much power in versus what you are getting out in Hydrogen power. This technology does not exist. If you can prove that mankind has invented a car that can run using only water as fuel go ahead. Or, if you wan to post the videos that you derived your debate stance from you can do that too. Otherwise, drop the water powered car. You are really reaching to try and avoid and deny the fact that the planet only has so many resources and we are consuming them at a rapid rate.

I didn't address your statement about resource explosions because, once again, you just made it up.

I understand saying that the population grew 6 times as large, but where is your data coming from that says our resources have grown by 80 times? You made that number up and that's why it wasn't worth bringing up. Let's bring up some more numbers though. In 2000 years we've gone from 200 million all the way to nearly 7 billion. Most of the increase has come in the recent past. The acceleration is not a straight line, but rather a quickly arching jump that continues to compound. How many people can the Earth support?

 

Why should I bother arguing with you when I say something and you claim like I just made it up? How about you do yourself a favor and argue the actual point rather than contradict me because either way you have no proof that I made it up.

 

You can't just come i here and state facts without backing them up. I believe what you meant to say was that resource consumption has increased over the century (a general fact). Sure resources replenish themselves, but at a great deal less than the amount that we use. It takes millions of years for the creation of fossil fuels like petroleum. We will take that same petroleum that took millions of years to be made and use it all up in a matter of weeks. Tell me what your rational is in saying that there is a "resource explosion."

 

Last time I checked, a fact didn't need to be backed up. Did you ever take that lesson in first grade where you state whether something is fact or opinion? Resource explosion doesn't mean just oil. It seems that all we take into account is oil. Farms seeds trees. Ocean river water.

 

The fact that a "Fact" can be backed up/ proven is what makes it a fact in the first place.

Because some people need actual evidence before believing something is true/ exists.

What are you saying? That there will be a machine that makes matter in the future? Perhaps machines to help resource efficiency will slow down the process, but at the same time, our population is expanding at an accelerating rate. Earth has a FINITE set of resources, that will eventually run dry.

You use "Ocean -> river water." as an example of a replenishable resource. While it is true that the ocean is filled by river water, the river are filled with melted snow and rain, which comes from clouds, which comes from the ocean. Do you understand now how we have a absolute amount of water? It's not magically "appearing" in the rivers, and if you can acknowledge this, then you have to acknowledge the fact we are indeed running out of resources.