Worrying about the heafty consumption of natural resources

[poo62.2]

I know this may seem abit stupid and an overeaction to some of you, but even though im not an adult yet, i worry about how fast were diging up and using natural resources for dumb products.

Im talking about digging up earth metals for such needless things, like arn't there enough bathtaps in the world to be getting on with! And We've already got enough copper 1p and 2p coins to cover the world, we don't need to dug up any more copper. Things wont last forever, and i bet in the future, if we don't do something about it, were all gonna be kicking ourselves forusing the last chunk of metal to make a spoon or something.

Maybe its just me over reacting.

[Baron Samedi]

[size=1]With elements such as Copper and many other metals, there isn't any incredible shortage. So, I don't see that to be much of an issue I'm afraid. More of a worry is our rate of decimation of forests, and our rampant consumption of fossil fuels. Now [i]there's[/i] a problem. As available oil deposits start to run dry, the price will catapult, and research efforts into alternative methods will be increased a hundred-fold. There is already a lot of good and productive research going into alternative fuels, but not enough of a difference is being made to the average Joe. Is he or she really going to buy a new hybrid car, just to help save the environment? Not likely.

Also, as for calling them 'dumb' products... I'd have to disagree with you. That's like saying people should stop producing doorknobs and hinges because "Well, we've made millions of them, there must be enough". Not only do these industries provide employment and necessary products, but the drain on resources by these industries is minimal.[/size]

[Box Hoy]

I've read a couple chapters from this book called "The End of Oil". It basiclly goes through what will more than likely happen once the world runs out of oil.
Basiclly what it comes down to is that we're going to have to sacrifice some of our luxuries because the renewable resources that are getting big as the ones that will replace oil just aren't as powerful.

[Retribution]

[SIZE=1]Let's be realistic here. The world isn't physically able to stop itself from consuming such mass amounts of things like metal, food, space, or oil. How many of us are there on Earth again? [B]Nine billion[/B], last I checked. This means that all nine billion (or so) of us are using up resources, and so many economies are bolted into the ground and dependent on certain products that they can't reform their economy to be some super-enviromentally-friendly thing.

A good example was post-WWI. Our economies were centered around wartime production of stuff like guns, tanks, shells, bullets, fatigues, oil and such that when peacetime came around, it was hard to stop producing wartime material and go back to normal. You lose alot of jobs that way, and the economy suffers from it. Now if you will for a moment, imagine how many cars run on oil and gasoline. Good. Now imagine trying to stop that magnitude of consumption of those things, and change it to something like a hydrogen cell. God knows how long that'll take, and we haven't even made the hydrogen cell safe and dependable yet! It could blow up on you in an accident ... zepplin tragedies all over again.

All I can say is that necessity is the mother of invention, and that us humans refuse to die. We'll find something -- be it in comets, the moon, Venus' atmosphere for all I care -- to sustain us for a much longer time. Until then, we're on a sad path to destruction, and all we can do is slow down the inevitable.[/SIZE]

[Rick Hunter]

I really don't think you have to worry, about us, using up resources such as metals. What we should be worrying about though...are more of the natural resources. Such as Oil, and especially trees. Oil mainly based on the fact that were already starting to see oil deposits dry up. As many have already said, if oil drys up we could be in for some problems economy wise not to meantion alternative fuel wise. Tree's mainly because most natural areas such as the rain forest are basically extinct and as the forest area's start to diplensh so does certain wildlife that's becoming extinct.

However the growing problem with conservation right now, is the fact that no one really cares. Most of the things I listed above would take years if not hundreds perhaps thousands of years before we would feel the ramifications of it all. And as we all know we as humans aren't enternal so....it's only human nature not to give a damn what happens to our children's, childrens. *end sarcastic tone*

[Gen. Andronicus]

[QUOTE=Retribution][SIZE=1]Let's be realistic here. The world isn't physically able to stop itself from consuming such mass amounts of things like metal, food, space, or oil. How many of us are there on Earth again? [B]Nine billion[/B], last I checked. This means that all nine billion (or so) of us are using up resources, and so many economies are bolted into the ground and dependent on certain products that they can't reform their economy to be some super-enviromentally-friendly thing
.[/SIZE][/QUOTE]

Humans are too sex crazed and un-willing to sterilize, and look at who has to pay. You should ALL be ashamed of yourselves!

[Fall]

Earth will eventually eat itself away. And if it doesn't, we will. No doubt about it. It can been seen by everyone and everything. There's no way we can stop the world from consuming everything to a sustainable level. It's physically impossible.

Technology is the only obvious answer. Soon we're going to have cars that fly and man-made reality. I'd be surprised if we don't eventually come up with some sort of technology that defeats the purpose of natural resources even existing. We'll be able to create metals and liquids out of nothing.

Earth and all life [i]on[/i] Earth will eventually run on technology, if it's safe to say it doesn't already.

[Pumpkin]

[quote name='Retribution][SIZE=1']All I can say is that necessity is the mother of invention, and that us humans refuse to die. We'll find something -- be it in comets, the moon, Venus' atmosphere for all I care -- to sustain us for a much longer time. Until then, we're on a sad path to destruction, and all we can do is slow down the inevitable.[/SIZE][/quote][SIZE=1]
Retribution is right. I agree with the most important natural resources that we DO need to worry about are our forests and oil. Why do you think the U.S. is desperate to get oil? As far as I can see, people are pretty much going to war for it. (President Bush's want to take Iraq's Oil) It's pretty much necessary for our luxuries in life. It takes a large force to make a great change and that's why they have many groups helping to save the rain forest. Not only do trees provide the utensils and things we use everyday but they also provide most of our oxegen. If we do not have trees, I don't think we'll last very long.

Besides, If your really concerned about saving natural resources recycling and other stuff is available and believe it or not it does help. Although it's not as large as an organization, atleast your doing something. There are people out there believe it or not, that try and help from us destroying our planet. But as Retribution said, it pretty much is inevitable until we find a solution to fix it. Which in the future, I have faith we'll find a better anwser. [/SIZE]

[Semjaza]

A lot of people think oil will be at peak production soon. If that's true, at our current rates, we'll basically be out of the stuff well within our lifetimes. The sad thing is that most governments have chosen to remain idle and deny these things. Sometimes it has to do with who pays who what, unfortunately, and obviously oil companies have a large stake in this sort of thing.

Hopefully those in charge will wise up eventually and realize that we can't just concern ourselves with how much we're going to be using today, but also the general future. Considering the current state of environmental policy in the US, I'm not very optimistic. Talking about drilling the likely miniscule reserves in Alaska underneath supposedly protected park areas does not make me happy.

Even the things that are currently being done tend to be largely just words and smoke screens. What's being done with current air polution laws is pretty much extending the deadline for actually fixing and improving things, which wasn't necessary honestly. Stuff like this will probably always come up until we're living in tar pits or something lol.

[James]

[QUOTE=Pumpkin][size=1]
Why do you think the U.S. is desperate to get oil? As far as I can see, people are pretty much going to war for it. (President Bush's want to take Iraq's Oil) It's pretty much necessary for our luxuries in life. [/size][/QUOTE][font=Franklin Gothic Medium]Don't even go there. The war was [i]not [/i]about oil - don't fall into the trap of going with the herd on that one. If you have any understanding about the oil situation (or about what's been happening in Iraq since the war), you'll have a better perspective on that.[/font]

[font=Franklin Gothic Medium]Anyway, like most other people I do sometimes worry about these things. I'm not so concerned about metals and things like that, largely because there's already a very robust (and growing) sector related to recycling. What you'll find, especially in certain areas (such as cars), products are becoming increasingly recyclable. This means that metals (and even plastics and other materials) can be more easily re-used than they were in times past. I think that's one very important aspect to this whole dilemma - recycling, on a broader scale.[/font]

[font=Franklin Gothic Medium]I think the biggest issue is definitely going to be energy. Much of the world is relying on Middle Eastern oil right now and that's obviously not a good thing, for a multitude of reasons. But even more broadly than that, it's true that oil will not be plentiful enough to meet world demand. As a matter of fact, demand outpaces supply right now.[/font]

[font=Franklin Gothic Medium]My feeling on energy is that it has to be a multi-pronged approach. Based on various things I've read lately, I'm more inclined to support nuclear energy; a lot of the groups who are against it seem to be pretty ignorant about it. Certain nuclear waste can also be recycled and used in other areas, which is also a positive. Not to say for a moment that this is the ideal form of energy - but many people are talking about replacing oil with wind and solar power. That's kind of ridiculous, because you'd need insanely large wind farms to generate even a fraction of the power that people are currently using.[/font]

[font=Franklin Gothic Medium]Besides, who wants every coastline in the world to be covered in wind farms? Surely that has a detrimental impact on the environment as well.[/font]

[font=Franklin Gothic Medium]As far as oil drilling goes, it's hard to say. With the Alaskan thing, I'm hearing very mixed reports on both sides. One side claims that it'll have a limited environmental impact and that it will contribute a reasonable percentage of oil to America's overall oil useage for about thirty years or so. The other side claims that the reserves there are too small (but I haven't seen that quantified in any meaningful way yet) and that the environmental impact would be too large. Of course, there are groups who will oppose [i]any [/i]kind of drilling or development, citing environmental concerns. So I suppose it largely depends which group is saying what, and what their credibility is based on their past claims. I haven't spent enough time looking at those issues though, because I think it's relatively unimportant, but I am not personally in a position to have a judgement or an opinion on that just yet.[/font]

[font=Franklin Gothic Medium]Conservation is important, as is recyling and other things. But I think the most important thing is to focus on new forms of energy and to focus on cleaner forms of energy. I'm not talking about solar or wind power (though they are useful in limited areas), I'm talking about researching and focusing on energy for the mass market...again, things like nuclear energy or gas energy or fusion energy. The latter is probably still fifty years off, but most scientists seem to agree that it represents the "future of energy" and a potential replacement for fossil fuel based energy. So we'll see I guess.[/font]

[Baron Samedi]

[size=1]In addition to James' comments on the nuclear energy area, I'd like to talk a bit about nuclear fusion.

Nuclear fission, which is currently the only productive and feasible method of nuclear energy production only occurs on a very limited number of sites around the world. Due to the inability to recycle the uranium fuel rods once they have been used, and the extremely long period of time [approx. 50,000 years] until they 'cool down', nuclear fission is widely regarded as a dangerous and volatile thing, especially considering the events which occurred at Chernobyl and Long Island. However, there is a new type of technology which they are working on called nuclear fission. It produces a tiny amount of radioactive waste [which has a relatively short half-life] and it is capable of producing a lot of energy. In their experiments they are approaching a break-even point - that is, the reaction can produce as much energy as is needed to sustain it. It requires greater than a million degrees centigrade temperatures, and extreme pressures to sustain and contain the fusion reaction.

But the experiments are very fruitful and approaching a usable condition. So, energy production in the future will not be as much of a problem, hopefully.[/size]

[Delta]

[COLOR=#CAA617][SIZE=1]Know what? I bet if we could find a way to properly harness geothermal energy, we could do away with nuclear-, natural gas- and fuel-driven power. It's pretty hot down there and you get high geothermal gradients in active zones but it's virtually renewable.

[quote name='James][font=Franklin Gothic Medium']Besides, who wants every coastline in the world to be covered in wind farms?[/font][/quote]*raises hand*

-------+

The demand for copper has gone down in the past decade with the development of new transmitting media for wires, or so I heard. But what exactly are we going to do with the excess copper?

That's right, more copper bathtaps.
[/SIZE][/COLOR]

[Morpheus]

Fusion would be amazing. A few pounds of hydrogen could fuel the world for a year.

But let's think from a present standpoint. The ability to even make fusion could be a century away. We may never be able to control it. Instead of dwelling on that, here is a feasable way for us to get energy: Solar panels. Expensive as they are, they harness a power we use very seldomly. The sun will give us limitless energy until it engulfs earth.

[James]

[QUOTE=Revue][color=#caa617][size=1].

*raises hand*

[/size][/color][/QUOTE][font=franklin gothic medium]So...you'd be happy to have miles and miles of coastline covered in enormous man-made windmills? I just personally would hate to spoil the natural beauty by plugging in all of these giant man-made objects. Yuck. Not to mention that the power that comes from them wouldn't be enough anyway, for the most part.

The same is true with solar energy. The cost just doesn't make it feasible for one thing, but for another, the amount of power that solar cells collect is just too small. When you have low power production at high cost, serving only a small amount of people...it's just not worth it.

I think fusion will probably be the biggest revolution in power. I've seen a few documentaries about it - there are already experiments going on in this field. A giant fusion reactor was built in Europe for such experimentation. However, it [i]is [/i]difficult to contain the energy...apparently it's akin to threading a needle while wearing boxing gloves - it's very cumbersome and we don't have the precision to do it properly.

But apparently it'll be more realistic within about fifty years. That'd certainly be nice, though I think it's probably an optimistic view.[/font]

[Maully]

Well, let's hope that this first post of my return is worthwhile.

As James said, windfarms are an eyesore (paraphrased, of course). They also due quite a bit of environmental harm, actually. Birds and bugs are killed by the hundreds each year by existing wind turbines, thus having a large negative effect on the local ecosystem. That, of course, is only a single downfall. Given time to do more research I am sure I could find thousands of articles for and against all alternative energy sources.

Personal or single house solar panels and wind turbines seem to be rather successful. Sure, some of the energy used in the home is coming from the large companies, but when the items in the house are turned off, it is recharging itself. Many people are actually selling electricity [I]back to the electric company[/I]. Thus helping the environment and lessening their bill... think about that one.

I think that too many people are leaving it up to governments and companies to make moves in the right direction. Personal responsibilty helps in this situation. Not to be preachy, but whoever it was that was talking about conservation is right. Recycling on a small or large scale needs to increase. That's whether you are talking about fuel consevation or land conservation. You can go to landfills in America and find readable newspapers from the 70's. Really, nothing is breaking down... It just sits there until they put a golf course over it.

Fusion would be a tremendous asset, but I don't see it being feasable in the immediate future, at least not from the reports I've seen. As for drilling in Alaska, well, I'm torn on that. I realize there is an enormous amout of oil there, but to open that can of worms 1) doesn't help us learn to conserve for the long run, and 2) disturbs a National Land Reserve. But it would help alleviate what I'm paying for gas right now...

[Gavin]

[SIZE=1]Interesting, most interesting.[/SIZE]

[quote name='Retribution][SIZE=1]How many of us are there on Earth again? [B]Nine billion[/B'], last I checked. [/SIZE][/quote]

[SIZE=1]I'm surprised I'm the first to correct this, the current population of Earth is nowhere near nine billion . The actual population if memory serves is somewhere just above the six billion mark, which even still is far too high given the size of Earth, and the limited resources available for consumption. Though it may sound heartless (and I'm just stating a simple fact) we are rather fortunate that there are not so many first world countries as there could be, as there just simple isn't enough to go round.

Aside from the Iraq War driving up the cost of crude oil, other countries like China are becoming more economically prosperous as people are buying cars, which means that there is less oil to go round that there used to be, which in turn puts up the price of it. Again simple fact, I'm not being cruel or saying that we should make more countries third-world just to satisfy economic demand.

The replacing of fossil fuels with other non-limited fuels is simply a reality that has to be faced, so far most of these alternative energy systems require certain conditions that may not be available everywhere. The mass area required for wind farms to be actually worth the investment is rather large, as well as the fact that they are in the opinion of most people eye-sores. Others such as hydro-electric energy also require certain circumstances and are not viable everywhere. That said of course I am a huge supporter of developing alternative cheap energy sources which would potentially cure all of Earth's power consumption problems.

Technologies like Nuclear Fusion while still not viable, though perhaps not viable is not the correct word. Antimatter annihilation (the collision of matter and antimatter) to produce energy is another sci-fi to sci-fact technology which is gaining interest as a possible energy source, however the inefficiently involved in such at technology at the moment make it unusable.

Here?s Wiki?s article on Antimatter, or it?s use as a fuel.[/size]

[QUOTE][FONT=Trebuchet MS][SIZE=2][CENTER][B]Antimatter as fuel[/B][/CENTER]

In antimatter-matter collisions, the entire rest mass of the particles is converted to energy. The energy per unit mass is about 10 orders of magnitude greater than chemical energy, and about 2 orders of magnitude greater than nuclear energy that can be liberated today using chemical reactions or nuclear fission/fusion respectively. The reaction of 1 kg of antimatter with 1 kg of matter would produce 1.8×1017 J of energy (by the equation E=mc²). In contrast, burning a kilogram of gasoline produces 4.2×107 J, and nuclear fusion of a kilogram of hydrogen would produce 2.6×1015 J. Not all of that energy can be utilized by any realistic technology, because as much as 50% of energy produced in reactions between nucleons and antinucleons is carried away by neutrinos, so, for all intents and purposes, it can be considered lost. [2]

The scarcity of antimatter means that it is not readily available to be used as fuel, although it could be used in antimatter catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion. Generating a single antiproton is immensely difficult and requires particle accelerators and vast amounts of energy?millions of times more than is released after it is annihilated with ordinary matter, due to inefficiencies in the process. Known methods of producing antimatter from energy also produce an equal amount of normal matter, so the theoretical limit is that half of the input energy is converted to antimatter. Counterbalancing this, when antimatter annihilates with ordinary matter energy equal to twice the mass of the antimatter is liberated?so energy storage in the form of antimatter could (in theory) be 100% efficient. Antimatter production is currently very limited, but has been growing at a nearly geometric rate since the discovery of the first antiproton in 1955[3]. The current antimatter production rate is between 1 and 10 nanograms per year, and this is expected to increase dramatically with new facilities at CERN and Fermilab. With current technology, it is considered possible to attain antimatter for $25 million per gram by optimising the collision and collection parameters (given current electricity generation costs). Antimatter production costs, in mass production, are almost linearly tied in with electricity costs, so economical pure-antimatter thrust applications are unlikely to come online without the advent of such technologies as deuterium-deuterium fusion power. Several NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts-funded studies [4] are exploring whether the antimatter that occurs naturally in the Van Allen belts of Earth, and ultimately, the gas giants like Jupiter, might be able to be collected with magnetic scoops, at hopefully lower cost per gram.

Since the energy density is vastly higher than these other forms, the thrust to weight equation used in antimatter rocketry and spacecraft would be very different. In fact, the energy in a few grams of antimatter is enough to transport an unmanned spacecraft to Mars in about a month?the Mars Global Surveyor took eleven months to reach Mars. It is hoped that antimatter could be used as fuel for interplanetary travel or possibly interstellar travel, but it is also feared that if humanity ever gets the capabilities to do so, there could be the construction of antimatter weapons.[/SIZE][/FONT][/QUOTE]

[SIZE=1]Again it seems that as well as using the more efficient alternative fuel sources the use of well run Nuclear Fission reactors will just have to be something that people get used to. Yes there are horrific accidents like Chernobyl which bring Nuclear Fission technology into a very bad light, but at the moment it?s all we?ve really got. [/SIZE]