Remember Fukushima?

[jco1385 5,000+ posts]

So if 14,000 people had died in the United States from Fukushima(eCrack disproved this, but I'm including an if), it wouldn't matter because there are several billion people on Earth?

wouldn't this qualify as nature taking care of it's overpopulation problem?

 

[sam_b03 10+ year member]

I haven't seen too many problems since just about every well dug since the 50's has been frac'ed. I live about 30 miles from one of the most actively drilled areas on Earth.

Baker Hughes Incorporated - Overview & FAQ going off the charts on this site. OK has 198 +/- and district 10 of TX (the panhandle) has 60 something rigs. The entire Middle East has 290. Just for a reference, There are 3452 rigs in the world and 1864 are in the US.

If we quit quit selling to other countries we could become alot more independant. Maybe the other other countries work for cheaper and it is still profitable to buy and ship it here than produce and use our own. The oil patch pays well. Rig hands start out in the low $20/hr. The top guy on the rig is around $30/hr. Alot of the these guys are make 80K a year or more with no High school deploma and are felons. The company man on makes $1500/day. One the well is dug and worked over. The water that was pumped into the ground is pushed back out by the pressure of the gas. Somebody has to watch it and call the water trucks to haul off. They make $800/day and can be on location from a couple weeks. My friend was out there for over 100 days on one location. He just has a HS deploma. I met a company man one time that said and this is a quote "I gots me a million dollars and alls I gots is a 6th grade education."

 

[MisterDeadeye 10+ year member]

wouldn't this qualify as nature taking care of it's overpopulation problem?

If nature was a wizard, maybe.

 

[jco1385 5,000+ posts]

If nature was a wizard, maybe.

why would that be any different than the oil disappearing or the adaptation after Chernobyl?

 

[MisterDeadeye 10+ year member]

why would that be any different than the oil disappearing or the adaptation after Chernobyl?

I was just asking the guy if he thought 14,000 human deaths was a big deal or not. Certain fungi eat oil, and plants/animals evolve to overcome physical barriers.

How is an earthquake and a fungus the same thing? One's a natural disaster and the other's a living organism.

 

[jco1385 5,000+ posts]

I was just asking the guy if he thought 14,000 human deaths was a big deal or not. Certain fungi eat oil, and plants/animals evolve to overcome physical barriers.
How is an earthquake and a fungus the same thing? One's a natural disaster and the other's a living organism.

Both are forces of nature though, and nature takes care of everything in the end. There is a substantial overpopulation of the planet. Just like all that oil out there... nature will take care of it. 14,000 people is not a big deal.

 

[MisterDeadeye 10+ year member]

Both are forces of nature though, and nature takes care of everything in the end. There is a substantial overpopulation of the planet. Just like all that oil out there... nature will take care of it. 14,000 people is not a big deal.

If there was evidence that nature is intelligent, I'd be more inclined to agree with you. Earthquakes are a heavily studied subject, and we know the physics behind what causes them.

Really though, I wouldn't be surprised if nature is intelligent, and is trying to get rid of us. Anything's possible.

 

[Tupolev 10+ year member]

Geothermal and solar energy are viable sources of energy. Wind energy is just gay and pollutes the grid with dirty power. Hydroelectric is alright, but it is the riskiest option with the greatest impact on the ecosystem.

I'm still pushing for nuclear energy. It's clean, safe, and efficient. The only accidents that did anything were Chernobyl and Fukushima-Daiichi plant. Fukushima got hit by a 9.0 earthquake and a tsunami in the same hour. I'm pretty sure if the Three Gorges Dam got hit by just the earthquake at least one million people will be dead and a few hundred thousand more would be displaced. Chernobyl was a total accident attributed by human error and a lack of back up systems. Like Three Mile Island, which never happened. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/blackeye.gif.66a1670f5aaf7f406e783a63e3387dc5.gif

Tl;dr: Nuclear power is the future. I don't want to to be a permanent solution, but it should curb our appetite for carbon based fuels. If we latch onto nuclear power like we did oil I can see a real life Advent Children going on. Great movie by the way.

EDIT: We need to get the population back down to two billion. Humans act the same way as cancer cells, but on a different scale. We are parasitoids, but I'm sure we've grown intelligent enough to understand that we do not want to kill our host. (At least until we can secure our future on another planet) Even then, we are still parasitoids.

 

[jco1385 5,000+ posts]

Nature doesn't need to be intelligent for it to control the population. Famine, disease and natural disasters (hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, etc...) can easily do the job.

 

[MisterDeadeye 10+ year member]

Nature doesn't need to be intelligent for it to control the population. Famine, disease and natural disasters (hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, etc...) can easily do the job.

For nature to be doing anything, it has to be intelligent. It has to interpret some form of data and turn it into another form of data. That's what the word do implies.

This is really just an argument about semantics, though. I understand what you're saying. Famine could be attributed to people not farming enough. Hurricanes, tornadoes, and tsunamis are all caused by specific things, not nature itself.

 

[jco1385 5,000+ posts]

what does 'nature itself' consist of if hurricanes, tornadoes and tsunamis aren't nature?

and i'm just here because i need to catch up on my poasts and this is fun //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/sneaky.gif.7189749b3a3f769e8815b47e8ae87f88.gif

 

[MisterDeadeye 10+ year member]

what does 'nature itself' consist of if hurricanes, tornadoes and tsunamis aren't nature?
and i'm just here because i need to catch up on my poasts and this is fun //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/sneaky.gif.7189749b3a3f769e8815b47e8ae87f88.gif

Yes, they're technically part of nature. Your original statement was something along the lines of "Nature is taking care of itself", when nature is also technically just a mismatch of plants, animals, and phenomena. To say it is doing anything is implying that it is capable of doing something. We're also a part of nature, technically.

 

[Tupolev 10+ year member]

what does 'nature itself' consist of if hurricanes, tornadoes and tsunamis aren't nature?

I'll be a Wiki-warrior:

Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. It ranges in scale from the subatomic to the cosmic.

I don't think nature is "intelligent", it's just acting inside the laws of the physical world. This isn't a Butterfly Effect phenomena.

Or is it? //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/sneaky.gif.7189749b3a3f769e8815b47e8ae87f88.gif

 

[MisterDeadeye 10+ year member]

it's just acting inside the laws of the physical world.

This. It was coincidence(some would disagree) that Fukushima was blasted with flying poo, not nature's will.

 

[jco1385 5,000+ posts]

I'll be a Wiki-warrior:Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. It ranges in scale from the subatomic to the cosmic.

I don't think nature is "intelligent", it's just acting inside the laws of the physical world. This isn't a Butterfly Effect phenomena.

Or is it? //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/sneaky.gif.7189749b3a3f769e8815b47e8ae87f88.gif

then those are a part of nature. that's why they're called natural disasters. nature isn't 'doing' anything per se, but the causes of nature have an effect on everything. hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, diseases and all that jazz are in effect controlling the population.

i'm out gaiz //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wave.gif.002382ce7d7c19757ab945cc69819de1.gif