Hydrogen

Accelerated 'natural wastage' due to a decline in living standards might move things on a bit..

Around the world as living standards go up the family size correspondingly decreases. The driver for this is if people feel more secure about their old age they don’t rely on a large number of children to support them. The side effect of this is there are less mouths to feed so the family is less poor.

Drive down living standards and the birth rate will increase.

Want to have another go?

regards Martin

The population of the planet is currently at its highest ever level, so are you saying that living standards must be at an all time low?

Do you want to have another go?

Be careful what you wish for!

Before voting naively for death sentences, I advise one and all to make absolutely certain they aren't going to be on the list.

Playing the Balloon Game, it's dangerous to assume anything, least of all that we will make the rules or be able to enforce them.

Trouble is when load shedding becomes necessary, it's best to dump the heavy stuff first, closely followed by anything that doesn't help solve the problem. Be realistic - as individuals do we actually help solve problems, or just have strong opinions?

As getting rid of unproductive pensioners in poor health would deliver major benefits, supporting extremists offering quick simple results might be a case of Turkeys voting for Christmas.

And in an energy crisis, an angry majority looking for someone to blame will find boomers are right in the cross-hairs. Those unwisely flaunting gas-guzzling beliefs in a riot might end up swinging from a lamppost.

Dave

Where did I say that I wanted population reduction?

I just stated the obvious: Smaller population = less energy consumption.

No that’s not what I said. Birth rate inversely tracks with living standards in individual nations. Countries with low living standards which don’t include stuff like pensions and elderly care provision have high birth rates as people ensure their own old age by having many children. So you can have an affluent world with pockets of countries with high poverty rates and high birth rates.

I agree with you that it is desirable to stabilise global population. It is also clear that in order to do so one must ensure the elderly across the word are cared for by the state, that they are confident that this will happen and you educate people especially women to show that their living standards actually increase by having smaller families.

regards Martin

Edited By Martin Kyte on 20/01/2023 17:30:00

Too many quotation lines-

The USA did not participate in the bribery attempts at reducing the birth rate in various countries over the three or so decades saying the only thing that would work was the education of women. I think they were right.

It appears that the global population is slowly falling. The immediate response in some of the responsible media was "who is going to look after the elderly?". We have not moved very far from the need, for some regimes, to have large families to provide more soldiers and mothers to give birth to yet more soldiers. A quick reduction in population difficult, ask the Chinese. There are extreme methods that would give good results, a limited nuclear war or the return of the Black Death.

Somehow I think Malthus is nigh. Some may disagree.

This subject shows the value of "The Tea Room".

JA

Written before I saw Martin's latest post.

Edited By JA on 20/01/2023 17:42:36

All of this soon gets much more complicated if you factor in survival rate & death rate alongside the birth rate.

I would have thought a modern day person with lowered living standards would be less likely to reproduce, less likely to survive the hardship and therefore more likely to die before their time.

Not quite as new as the article claims it’s called pilot injection in other OEM / researchers parlance. There are a few applications of this in commercial service, at least one in marine. It seems to be most effective in the mid power range but does not completely eradicate NOx and SOx. Given all the hoops you have to jump through for marine on the H2 storage and on board distribution in terms of ventilation, monitoring and ex rated electrical equipment you may as well go the whole hog and remove the ICE. However it is giving opportunities for flag states and class to develop experience, confidence and rules for hydrogen and the big plus is it retains some flexibility on range and duty cycle so can be viewed as a useful transitional step to eventual tailpipe or net zero.

Paul.

As I say the critical factor is are they going to get looked after in their old age. In the UK there is state support for the elderly so having a large family simply to ensure elderly care is not a factor. I would say having no children is a worry though. So yes a person in a ‘modern’ country with decent healthcare and elderly support may be less likely to have a large number of children in straightened circumstances. These countries tend not to have high birth rates anyway so the effect is going to be minimal.

There are a lot of countries who do not fit the above description which is where you find the highest birth rates and where poverty levels are also high. These are the places that drive global population growth.
All of this is a very powerful argument for foreign aid and attempts to lift countries out of poverty.

regards Martin

PS The trouble is as the joke goes, if we wanted to get to a smaller global population we would be best not to start from here.

Just to make all this less serious.

About 20 years ago an Indonesian population control expert was asked "What one thing would really reduce the birth rate?". Reply "Electricity to all homes".

Which brings us back to power generation.

JA