will the worlds over population epidemic be the final straw for global warming?

Question

If we keep tripling our population then not only will we be tripling our use of resources and depleting our ozone three times as much BUT also I think our body heat might add to the warm wave epidemic because that would be triple the body heat in the world therefore raising our core temperature three times..

what can I do to warn people?

Answer 1

You betcha!!!

Answer 2

The population is not expected to triple from current numbers, double at most, more likely to rise by about 50% to between 9 & 10 billion. Notwithstanding your numbers, it is still the root cause of GW, the planet can't support current numbers let alone future increases.

The first link is a link to an 8 part lecture on the topic of population growth. If you want to warn people just forward to those you wish to warn. "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." ~ Dr. A. Bartlett

Conservation is not enough to offset population growth. If we don't start teaching responsible sexuality in schools, I fear it may lead to Eugenics being very popular in the future. Hitler tried it once and he wasn't very popular. The more we play God the more we mess things up.

The second link is to a recent program on Epigenetics: the study how how our current environment genetically affects our offspring for up to 5 generations in the future. Today's pollution can negatively affect the health of your great great great grandchildren. There are reasons other than Global Warming to be concerned about pollution; "your body is NOT the vessel for YOUR soul, it is the vessel for the souls of future generations." ~ me.

Answer 3

SHORT ANSWER

The amount of body heat that every person on the planet produces is tiny compared to the amount of heat the sun provides. We'd actually need to increase the population 70,000 times over to equal the amount of heat from the sun.


MORE DETAILED ANSWER

The speed by which the population is expanding is incredible. In the last 100 years the number of people on the planet has increased four fold and the population now stands at 6.6 billion. This rapid rate of increase is expected to continue before the global population more or less levels itself out. By 2050 it is expected that there will be 9 billion people on the planet and by 2150 the figure looks likely to be around the 10 billion mark. Basically, the peak of the world's population is expected to be about one and a half times the current population.

This will put an ever increasing demand on the world's resources, this happens because of two primary factors. Firstly, more people means more resources are needed but more importantly, each person is using an ever increasing amount of resources.

Turning more to the point you made about people giving off heat. We do indeed give off heat but the amount we produce compared to the amount of heat the sun provides is very small.

We can do a rough calculation here. Each calorie you eat produces about 1 Watt of energy, an average person might eat 2000 calories a day which means they produce 2 kilowatt hours worth of energy each day; that's about the same as running an electric heater on a low setting for two hours. This energy isn't all given off as heat, it's used for every function your body performs, the amount of heat energy is approx 1kWh per day.

Scale this up to reflect the entire population and we get a figure of approx 2.4 trillion kW per year (1kWh per person per day x 6.6 billion people on the planet x 365 days a year). That's an awful lot of energy but it's nothing compared to what the sun provides us with - some 174 quadrillion kW or 72,500 times as much heat as all us humans produce.

I think we can safely discard the amount of body heat we produce, but the amount of resources we consume is a different matter. Just in terms of the greenhouse gases alone, each person on the planet produces an average of 17kg (35 pounds) per day and it's this which is causing the problem in respect of global warming. The reason being that these greenhouse gases have the ability to retain heat within our atmosphere and this causes our planet to warm up.

You mentioned also the ozone layer. This is something different to global warming, there are links between the two but the causes and effects are very different and the amount of warming caused by the 'hole' in the ozone layer is almost negligible.

Answer 4

When I read your question, I was wondering if you meant that the media would get over global warming and move onto another issue, I mean since when does driving SUV's cause people to have more kids. Maybe someone who drives an SUV can tell me if there's a connection.

Answer 5

I think your best bet is try to educate them to use least natural resources, particularly the petrol gas. It is proven that the death caused by air pollution is about two million lives each year in this world. The classfied death causes including lung and heart related diseases,epidemic caused by foul air transmitted from polluted environment to human kinds. I suggest that you should do something starting from your own community by sending them pamphets with well-described words how to keep the environment clean,consume less energy, and with good warning examples of how death is caused by foul air. This will bring some good results.

Answer 6

It already is the final straw for global warming - reduction of forest canopies to make room for people and peoples greed, the washing of soil to the sea lifting the sea levels - how many more.

All you can do is speak, but which countries would listen

Answer 7

Calm down.

If you took the land mass (square miles) of Texas and made a square or rectangle of it and subdivided it into 100' x 100' building lots, allowing for roads, the entire population of the world could live there in single story, single family homes.

Answer 8

Well, yeah, but not because of body heat or ozone layer considerations.

What can you do? Nothing. The Media has us. It's like when the Matrix has you but it's worse, and there are commercials for SUVS too.

Quick thought for your budding brain: if commercials fund our news programming, can reporting be unbiased?

Answer 9

The world can handle 5 times more people than we have now. There is no problem with over population. Currently everyone on earth can have 5 acres of land.

If it really bothers you, please set an example and refrain from having kids.