Did anyone discuss the merits of rapid depletion and a quick, life-changing crash versus a slow, painful devolution in which anything with carbon in it will be burned up to try to keep the system going?
Thanks for your coverage, by the way. I wish I could have been there, too.
Heading Out, first, thanks again for keeping us up to date on a conference that many of us would have found interesting but due to pressing work obligations or travel issues, could not be there for....
Now, to the light good natured fun, let me tackle this one...since I was the one that started the string...
"O.K., Heading Out, time to come clean and admit it...you really have something of a crush on Megan Quinn, don't you...."
(my little bit of ribbin' ya..., then a responder got in on it with me...
-----------
He so does. It's totally obvious. =)
and your closing remarks...
She, apparently gave the best end speech that some had heard, and functioned very effectively in being MC, and since I did not hear the speech, and missed her movie twice now, I thought a little extra recognition would be fair.
I keep hearing that, and I assume us TOD folks will be given a chance to read her speech, and where to find it....and I do hope you took my very innocent remark as good natured teasing you on the subject, your admiration of her is obvious, and in that, it is shared, I have read as many of her words as I can easily find, and she comes across as clever, well informed, logical in her thinking, but avoids the dark trap of "woes me, nothing can be done", all around a very interesting and pioneering woman of intellectual greatness...(by the way, remember the days on the school yard when us guys teased each other, "Billy likes Suzy!", and you later found they were just teasing from envy....because they would have enjoyed being in your place getting to speak to her..., guys, we never grow up....:-)
On a much more philosophical note....(important text ahead..)
Your remark...
<Bill McKibben, Pat Murphy and those others who said that investing in technology is a waste of time, got me irritated, and less inclined to listen to what they were saying. As Governor Schweitzer said "if you showed up at the meeting, you were part of the problem!" (Because you used energy to get there). We have to find new ways of doing things, and new technologies.>
This is SO MUCH at the center of the philosophical issue of energy depletion....and resource depletion/environmental degradation, that I have argued it with fellow "depletion/degradation" aware friends and thinkers many times:
There seems to be two ways in which "Peak Oil" or "Resource Depletion" are viewed:
(a) "Thank Heaven, the filthy, consumptive, greedy rich and fat society is doomed, the collapse is finally here! The Industrial age with it's dirty dangerous factories, mass produced cars and plastics and household goods, and jet set speeds are not humane, and they are an affront to nature and real humane sustainability.
The oil and gas is running out. Get rid of IT...the luxury, the modernity, the wealth, and back to a simpler age, more in tune with nature, and the first that should go is THE CAR, the hated car, it is that evil machine that has done this to us, but it IS OVER. There will be no technical fix, and there SHOULD BE NO TECHNICAL FIX. Trying to save this culture is DOOMED, and we are free of the capitalist, consumerist, CAR culture at last!
The whole culture, built around THE CAR is corrupt, it is a foul and a bad system that IS FINISHED."
(this seems to be very common here on TOD)
or,
(b) "We have a problem. Resources used to maintain our current standard of living and current view of freedom, mobility and culture, and the environmental damage done by the current system are not sustainable, and we consume resources faster than they can be replaced, and damage environments faster than nature can repair them.
We must move now to try to maintain our culture by attempting to use our options, our resources and our imaginations to move our culture to a sustainable basis. These will be very big changes, and major sacrifice will be needed, along with use of design, engineering and organizational skill to change our current system and modify it to reduce consumption, operate much cleaner, waste much less and reuse and recycle much more. Used carefully, there are enough resources to retain our culture and our ideas of reasonable well being, mobility and security for the world's people, but only if we are very careful and very inventive in the path we take. But we can rebalance our consumption, broaden our options, enhance real democracy and enhance our culture with a more civil community and artful lifestyle, and explore design, humane and people oriented science, and cultural organization not yet even dreamed of, IF we make the effort NOW. "
Notice the difference?
Option (a) does not see the situation as "Our culture has a problem" but instead sees it as "Our culture IS THE PROBLEM.
Peak Oil is just one of the greatest events to be seen as a tool to finish what is viewed as a corrupt and evil culture that should not be saved, and any attempt to do so simply extends a scourge (call it Industrialism, call it Western-ism, call it Capitalism, call it Modern Technical Society, it doesn't matter...) that must be removed. It is the "modern consumer capitalist technical culture that has held mankind back from achieving "true culture", or "community values" or "spiritual values" or....nirvana?
Option (b) takes the view that Industrial Modernism and technology, for all it's faults (and it surely has many) is well worth saving. It has lowered misery, enhanced choice, attempted to reach democratic values for as many as possible, and freed humans to enjoy quality, art, culture, communication and transportation, and provided a widely varied and interesting existence to the people it has touched. It views technology as not only useful but as art form, and that the exploitation of resources was and in some way will always be a crucial and needed part of expanding mankind's achievement, meaning, and variety of life on Earth.
It is a culture that must change, yes, a culture that must improve it's abilities to be sustainable, and to much MUCH better husband it's resources if it wants to continue broadening mankind's choices, freedom and well being, but that it is a culture well worth saving, a culture that provides it's own unique brand of human community, art, quality, and yes, even embodies the spiritual quest to bring mankind closer to the Creator, as man joins in the creation process. We have only now began to travel down the road to real, humane modernism.
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I beg you to notice that neither of the above options mention "specific" technologies or techniques. No mention of solar, wind, nuclear, coal to liquids, gas to liquids, corn to fuel, or for that matter, no mention of return to horses and subsistence farming.
Take notice that neither of the above options have any outside sources, as far as where to get the technology, what technology is mathematically proven, what options are tested by the government.
This is because neither of the above options are "scientific". We are not talking about "means to an end" but about "meaning" itself.
We are not talking about what is "doable" but instead about what is "desirable".
In fact, we are looking at two aesthetic choices. Both recognize the serious, perhaps catastrophic, effects of resource depletion. Both recognize the serious, perhaps catastrophic issues of environmental degradation. Both acknowledge the need for IMMEDIATE AND GREAT CHANGE. Both admit to the need for sacrifice, perhaps great sacrifice.
So how do they differ? In the goals. One sees a culture not worth saving, in which resource depletion and environmental degradation become almost "tools" to speed the death of what is viewed as an evil and diseased culture.
The other sees a great, perhaps the greatest, culture facing a crisis.
It feels and sees the art of the motorcar, the aircraft, the lit cities as one of the triumphs of human history. It sees television, radio, the personal computer as the triumph of ages of sacrifice, leading to better living for the masses. But it realizes that the consumption of resources to build and maintain this culture have been very high, and may not be sustainable at this level. But the goal should be to try to salvage the art of the technical culture by using the tools of the technical culture....research, inventive use of materials, art, design, combinations of management, financial, and technical skills to improve our sustainability, to maintain a culture of prosperity, choice, inventiveness, and yes, mobility.
It is the debate above that determines the action we take: Emotions become Thoughts. Thoughts become words. Words become actions. And actions, in mass, become culture.
I once heard a historian say of the Fall of Rome, that the biggest single factor among all the factors that caused the event may have been "the lack of collective will to save Rome."
So it may be for the "Modern" technical culture.
Go back to our two options. Option (a) says essentially, "Modern technical culture cannot be saved, and even if we could save it, we should not."
Option (b) says, "Modern technical culture can be saved, partially by using the very tools that created modern technical culture, and if it can be saved, IT MUST BE SAVED.
Which of these two choices we side with will be moral and aesthetic decisions, not technical or "scientific" ones. It is the GOAL that will construct the game.
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Now, I hope you see why I sign my work....
Heading Out, send the text above to Magen Quinn, I am always looking to score "brownie points"! ;-)
Options (a) and (b) are both bogus. Neither can keep up with an exponentially breeding human population. The voluntary population control movement of the 1960s failed. (And think what a different world we would be living in now if people worldwide had answered the call of ZPG in 1968, and the population had stabilized at 3 million worldwide and 180 million US!)
So the real issue is how to control the human population:
Option (c) let nature take its course (famine, pestilence, nuclear war)
Option (d) forced sterilizations, genocides
Man, I've spent the last 30 years thinking that I really like industrial modernity -- well, at least modern medicine and cars and Interets and all that -- but that having 7 billion humans on the Earth fighting like cats and dogs over resources would just become a nightmare ... which it has.
I suppose the "optimistic" answer is to build thousands of Arcosantis where we can all live in little cells in the beehive, but this to me is not about what humanity and freedom and dignity are all about.
Since farmland devoted to fuel production globally will increase dramatically each year, I would assume that total acreage devoted to food production has peaked. Therefore I assume total food production globally has peaked or will peak very soon. I cannot foresee the global population increasing continually as total food supply decreases (I would think rather dramatically as the crops for fuel industry explodes).
I'm certainly no expert on food production, but it is my understanding that while organic farming can be more profitable per acre than standard farming (less use of fossil fuels & chemicals), the yield per acre is lower. Therefore, we will need more land, using organic farming, to provide the same amount of food that we do now. This sets up the problem of land used for food versus fuel--both food producers and fuel producers will need more land. Of course, a lot of small "Victory Gardens" will help quite a bit.
It seems to me that we are rapidly approaching a point where most people's primary focus will be on how to pay their food and energy bills. I wonder if the energy riots we have seen on the Indian subcontinent are a sign of things to come worldwide.
In an interview a couple of years ago, Jay Hanson (I checked the link, and it is no longer available), said that most people are getting too hung up on the technical aspects of post-Peak Oil. He said the key problem is how do we control men when there is no economic growth?
I have wondered for some time about Jay's choice of his retreat, the Big Island of Hawaii. I am beginning to wonder if he chose Hawaii because he thinks that the biggest threat we face results from food and energy riots, i.e., the Pacific Ocean is one heck of a big moat. I wonder if the Big Island could technically be food self-sufficient?
One question that doen't seem to get addressed is the gross over consumption of food by the developed economies. Hence we assume that the amount of food demanded is the amount needed. It is well documented that the health of the UK population improved during the rationing in WW2. I am not suggesting anything as drastic but there is certainly room for redistribution and rationalisation in the current food chain. Shock horror - Big Macs Must Go ;-)
While the health of the UK population increased during the rationing period, that had more to do with a more equitable distribution of resources than with less food being consumed. Pre-WWII many many of Britian's poor were unable to aquire reasonable amounts of healthy food. Rationing was combined with the introduction of free school lunches for poor children, OJ rations for all young children, and milk and eggs for pregnant mothers. I think that was what really impacted Britian's health.
I don't go out to eat often, but when I do I notice one thing. At the Buffets, people waste a lot of food.
I cook as a hobby, and I grow food as a hobby, and I study food plants as a hobby. It shocks me that even those that come from low food regions in a few years of the Plenty of the US, adopt the same food habits of the Rest of the Citizens, or more accurately the wasteful folks.
We as Americans waste a lot of Food. We have laws in some cities that state that once its cooked and not eaten by the customer, we have to throw it out. We have "Grand Buffets" where the left over food could feed some families for WEEKS!! It all goes to waste!
So yeah, as the end of our "Easy Eating" Lifestyle comes to and end we will see the end of the Buffets, or at least the end of them as we now know them to be.
Hey I am moving to a small town,, How many buffets are there, I bet not a single one. Gee I wonder why??
It isn't just buffets. Fast food restaurants throw away enormous amounts of unsold food. They usually keep enough food sitting there to fill your order immediately (unless you order something unexpected) so they can call it fast food. Whatever isn't bought in a fairly brief period, gets tossed.
I used to volunteer at a soup kitchen, and they received boxes and boxes of donuts that weren't quite fresh enough to meet Dunkin's standards. I wonder how many donuts Dunkin and KK toss every day
less than 400 acres produces over 1 million pounds of taro, a traditional food of Pacific Islanders
This all sounds very productive to me. With over 60,000 acres of agricultural land being recently released from sugar cane production, farming just this land would require supporting about 3 people per acre to be self-sufficient on the Big Island. Statements from John Jeavons indicate that biointensive farming would support over 10 people per acre sustainably.
Westexas wrote:
"I'm certainly no expert on food production, but it is my understanding that while organic farming can be more profitable per acre than standard farming (less use of fossil fuels & chemicals), the yield per acre is lower."
I'm no expert either. I mentioned a few days ago that I had the pleasure of hosting Joel Salatin last weekend. He is a truely organic beef and poultry farmer in Virginia, not simply "organic" as a marketing ploy as the word has largely become.
He convincingly explained to me his methods that are low input and high yield. He improves his land each year and keeps a larger number of animals on his land than any of his neighbors. The quality of life for his charges is very good as well--all free range, grass fed and "grass finished"--no feed lot time before slaughter. The chickens follow the cattle sequentially on the same pastures, providing a more complex nutrition to the pasture grasses. In his philosophy, the health of the pasture is what comes first and the health of the animals follows from that naturally.
So there is some hope for greater efficiency in organic methods--though it is definitely more labor intensive.
-Matt DC
"Free range" and "Organic" red meat will not save you from colon cancer. In this study, the lowest risk group of subjects got 0-30 g of red meat per day.
Meat Consumption and Risk of Colorectal Cancer
Ann Chao, PhD; Michael J. Thun, MD, MS; Cari J. Connell, MPH; Marjorie L. McCullough, ScD; Eric J. Jacobs, PhD; W. Dana Flanders, MD, ScD; Carmen Rodriguez, MD, MPH; Rashmi Sinha, PhD; Eugenia E. Calle, PhD
JAMA. 2005;293:172-182.
full paper is free but requires registration. http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/293/2/172
The risks from very modest quantities of red meat can probably be lessened somewhat, but not completely, by a high fiber diet. From PMID 16452248: "In colonic exfoliated cells, the percentage staining positive for the NOC-specific DNA adduct, O(6)-carboxymethyl guanine (O(6)CMG) was significantly (P < 0.001) higher on the high red meat diet. In 13 volunteers, levels were intermediate on the high-fiber, high red meat diet."
It's probably not very healthy for the aquifer, either. Nitrates are usually at unaccpetable levels within several miles of animal farms.
It's not so great for other reasons as well. Land use is greater and irrigation needs are generally greater to much greater than for plant foods.
Locally grown organic legumes are a better bet.
See:
Asia Pac J Clin Nutr. 2004;13(2):217-20.
Legumes: the most important dietary predictor of survival in older people of different ethnicities.
Darmadi-Blackberry I, Wahlqvist ML, Kouris-Blazos A, Steen B, Lukito W, Horie Y, Horie K. http://www.healthyeatingclub.com/info/articles/diets-foods/Darmadi.pdf
It's probably not that legumes are all that. But, they have no heme iron, they are generally anticarcinogenic when cooked, they have lots of dietary fiber, and they are completely devoid of oxidized cholesterol.
Here is the problem I see with a dramatic increase in agricultural lands. Current methods that involve high yields of crops require several things:
First lots of water - essentially irrigation to protect against drought, where the water is pumped from underground aquifers.
Secondly fertilizer - generally made from natural gas. Essentially because monocultures tend to strip the nutrients from the soil (called by some mining the soil), so there is this constant need to replenish these nutrients.
Finally pesticides - generally also petrochemicals of one sort or another.
Of these, we have already talked a lot about limitations involving both oil and natural gas, so let me focus on water instead:
The Ogallala Aquifer, also known as the High Plains Aquifer, is a shallow water table aquifer located beneath the Great Plains in the United States. One of the world's largest aquifers, it lies under about 174,000 mi² (450,000 km²) in portions of the eight states of South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas. It was named in 1899 by N.H. Darton from its type locality near the town of Ogallala, Nebraska.
The regions overlying the Ogallala aquifer are some of the most productive regions for ranching livestock, and growing corn, wheat and soybeans in the United States (often called the "breadbasket of America"). The success of large-scale farming in areas which do not have adequate precipitation and do not always have perennial surface water for diversion, depends heavily on pumping groundwater for irrigation.
The aquifer was first tapped for irrigation in 1911. Large scale use for irrigation began in the 1930s and continued through the 1950s, due to the availability of electric power to rural farming communities and the development of cheap and efficient electric turbine pumps. Because the rate of extraction exceeds the rate of recharge, water level elevations are decreasing. At some places the water table was measured to drop more than five feet (1.5 m) per year at the time of maximum extraction. In extreme cases, the deepening of wells was required to reach the steadily falling water table; and it has even been drained (dewatered) in some places.
Water problems aren't just a problem for agriculture. There was a comment here at TOD about a place in Oklahoma where oil drilling had been suspended - the local town no longer had sufficient quantities of water required to support the drilling.
Depletion of the Ogallala aquifer is one reason I'm sceptical that present ethanol policies are sustainable. Parts of the aquifer in Oklahoma and Kansas are projected to be dewatered, as in dry, by 2020. A recent study of water supply for the Texas panhandle shows several counties without groundwater by 2050. Water use allocation will be on a lot more people's minds long before that. Ethanol costs will rise just due to the cost of water.
Thank you for bringing up the Peak Aquifer article.
The USA is surrounded on 3 sides by gazillions of gallons of water and yet we threaten to run dry. Needed is a Manhaten Project level desalinazation effort, not just for the sake of US citizens, but for citizens all around the world who are running short of fresh water. Its amazing that MSM has not picked up on any of the Chicken Little warning signs. It will be too late when the sky does fall.
Desalinization via reverse osmosis is very energy intensive. It costs 2-5x as much as aquifer withdrawal. The memberanes for ro are also very expensive. And what do you do with the waste product?
As much as I can be convinced that farmers will find ethanol crops to become a tempting investment to put on their fields, I also suspect that more of them will be mounting or at least leasing spots for wind-generators at the corners of those fields, and the numbers may well show where the best energy/cash returns will come from in the long-term. I'm sure a mixed 'energy crop' will make an appealing hedge.
You might see more electric vehicles getting used in agriculture, making a more direct use of that wind.. either that, or that farmers would commit a portion of their cropland for biofuel that would be grown to assist in their own energy needs. If anybody can find a way to improve eroei, I'll bet a farmer can.. the original scientists.
Some combination of engines powered by crop waste and zinc-air batteries recharged by wind might make farmers independent of motor fuel. What they'd need after that is some source of fixed nitrogen. I took a look at making a small Haber-process reactor using medical oxygen-concentrator tech to produce nitrogen, electrolysis to make hydrogen, SCUBA compressor to get it to the necessary pressure, and off-the-shelf stuff for reaction vessels and whatnot. It looks expensive.
The other side of the coin is that P and K can get washed out or removed with products, but they aren't easily liberated to the atmosphere as nitrogen is.
"I assume total food production globally has peaked or will peak very soon."
This is the most perceptive, and most alarming, observation I have read in some time. It condenses and encapsulates most of the biodiesel discussion we've been having, as well as many other threads.
Think about this: roughly half of the nitrogen in human biomass comes directly from the natural gas based fertilizers. As we hit peak gas, we probably hit peak food.
In addition, half of cropland use prior to the invention of the internal combustion engine went to feeding horses and oxen for primary power and transportation. The conversion of this cropland to direct human consumption helped feed the green revolution.
Now it looks like we'll be drifting back to having half our cropland go for transportation; but via biofuels and ethanol.
Thus, we should expect the decline after "peak food" to be quite steep. Very sobering.
Another downside is that 19th century cities had large crews sweeping up horse manure, to be transferred to farmers in surrounding farms, which produced food for the cities. There don't appear to be such manure production possibilities from vehicular transportation.
Jim - I happen to agree. Where did you get that stat about nitrogen in human biomass? That doesnt quite make sense - how long have they been using nat gas to make fertilizer? what about people that were born and grew up before this? their nitrogen came from existing soil? perhaps you mean the 'marginal nitrogen in human biomass' comes from NG....
I believe the nitrogen in your bodily proteins are replaced with some frequency, which is why you need a constant supply in your diet, and why you constantly excrete it in your urine.
The figure that sticks in my head is 40% of total nitrogen comes from Nat. Gas; it was in some science mag some time back.
To make it available to plants, the nitrogen in commercial fertilizers is in the form of ammonia, for which the nitrogen is pulled from the air and the hydrogen usually comes from natural gas. Fertilizers made from sewage sludge (I know of at least a couple) would be the most obvious exception.
I am trying to get some theoretical numbers behind this concept.
Let's say natural gas peaks in 2010, and declines 2% per year. Let's also assume a 1:1 ratio in food production losses (natural gas provides most of the feedstock for fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides).
That would mean an 18.3% loss by 2020.
Let us then factor in losses from the decline of irrigated fields, orchards and pasturelands, due to the skyrocketing cost of pumping water from declining aquifers. Let us assume 5% off the top.
Let us also assume a 5% off the top loss from the associated effects of peak oil (marginal farmers are driven out of business by skyrocketing costs for transport, fuel for tractors, plastic hoses and drip irrigation lines, etc.)
Now we are running at about 72% (rounded up).
Let us then assume that 10% of the remaining croplands are converted to energy sources (vegetable oils for biodiesel, carbon crops for ethanol, wood for fuel, etc.).
In this model we are down to 62% of present food production by the year 2020.
youre not 'wrong' per se, but several of those assumptions will have quite wide dispersions.
a)natural gas decline will be greater than 2% -it depletes faster than oil
b)there are other ways to generate fertilizer - compost, manure etc - not as good as NG, but can supplement
c) the main thing is that we could grow MORE food if everyone grew a bit of their own (20-30%) that way less fuel would be used to transport food and people could use their own gardens compost to replenish the soil. one acre of permaculture can grow food for alot of people - a different and better model than current large scale ag.
My brother is working for the German company Uhde, and they are building large urea plants everywhere where there is cheap natural gas. Currently, they are building the largest urea plant of the world in Saudi-Arabia.
Thanks for your coverage, by the way. I wish I could have been there, too.
Heading Out, first, thanks again for keeping us up to date on a conference that many of us would have found interesting but due to pressing work obligations or travel issues, could not be there for....
Now, to the light good natured fun, let me tackle this one...since I was the one that started the string...
"O.K., Heading Out, time to come clean and admit it...you really have something of a crush on Megan Quinn, don't you...."
(my little bit of ribbin' ya..., then a responder got in on it with me...
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He so does. It's totally obvious. =)
and your closing remarks...
She, apparently gave the best end speech that some had heard, and functioned very effectively in being MC, and since I did not hear the speech, and missed her movie twice now, I thought a little extra recognition would be fair.
I keep hearing that, and I assume us TOD folks will be given a chance to read her speech, and where to find it....and I do hope you took my very innocent remark as good natured teasing you on the subject, your admiration of her is obvious, and in that, it is shared, I have read as many of her words as I can easily find, and she comes across as clever, well informed, logical in her thinking, but avoids the dark trap of "woes me, nothing can be done", all around a very interesting and pioneering woman of intellectual greatness...(by the way, remember the days on the school yard when us guys teased each other, "Billy likes Suzy!", and you later found they were just teasing from envy....because they would have enjoyed being in your place getting to speak to her..., guys, we never grow up....:-)
On a much more philosophical note....(important text ahead..)
Your remark...
<Bill McKibben, Pat Murphy and those others who said that investing in technology is a waste of time, got me irritated, and less inclined to listen to what they were saying. As Governor Schweitzer said "if you showed up at the meeting, you were part of the problem!" (Because you used energy to get there). We have to find new ways of doing things, and new technologies.>
This is SO MUCH at the center of the philosophical issue of energy depletion....and resource depletion/environmental degradation, that I have argued it with fellow "depletion/degradation" aware friends and thinkers many times:
There seems to be two ways in which "Peak Oil" or "Resource Depletion" are viewed:
(a) "Thank Heaven, the filthy, consumptive, greedy rich and fat society is doomed, the collapse is finally here! The Industrial age with it's dirty dangerous factories, mass produced cars and plastics and household goods, and jet set speeds are not humane, and they are an affront to nature and real humane sustainability.
The oil and gas is running out. Get rid of IT...the luxury, the modernity, the wealth, and back to a simpler age, more in tune with nature, and the first that should go is THE CAR, the hated car, it is that evil machine that has done this to us, but it IS OVER. There will be no technical fix, and there SHOULD BE NO TECHNICAL FIX. Trying to save this culture is DOOMED, and we are free of the capitalist, consumerist, CAR culture at last!
The whole culture, built around THE CAR is corrupt, it is a foul and a bad system that IS FINISHED."
(this seems to be very common here on TOD)
or,
(b) "We have a problem. Resources used to maintain our current standard of living and current view of freedom, mobility and culture, and the environmental damage done by the current system are not sustainable, and we consume resources faster than they can be replaced, and damage environments faster than nature can repair them.
We must move now to try to maintain our culture by attempting to use our options, our resources and our imaginations to move our culture to a sustainable basis. These will be very big changes, and major sacrifice will be needed, along with use of design, engineering and organizational skill to change our current system and modify it to reduce consumption, operate much cleaner, waste much less and reuse and recycle much more. Used carefully, there are enough resources to retain our culture and our ideas of reasonable well being, mobility and security for the world's people, but only if we are very careful and very inventive in the path we take. But we can rebalance our consumption, broaden our options, enhance real democracy and enhance our culture with a more civil community and artful lifestyle, and explore design, humane and people oriented science, and cultural organization not yet even dreamed of, IF we make the effort NOW. "
Notice the difference?
Option (a) does not see the situation as "Our culture has a problem" but instead sees it as "Our culture IS THE PROBLEM.
Peak Oil is just one of the greatest events to be seen as a tool to finish what is viewed as a corrupt and evil culture that should not be saved, and any attempt to do so simply extends a scourge (call it Industrialism, call it Western-ism, call it Capitalism, call it Modern Technical Society, it doesn't matter...) that must be removed. It is the "modern consumer capitalist technical culture that has held mankind back from achieving "true culture", or "community values" or "spiritual values" or....nirvana?
Option (b) takes the view that Industrial Modernism and technology, for all it's faults (and it surely has many) is well worth saving. It has lowered misery, enhanced choice, attempted to reach democratic values for as many as possible, and freed humans to enjoy quality, art, culture, communication and transportation, and provided a widely varied and interesting existence to the people it has touched. It views technology as not only useful but as art form, and that the exploitation of resources was and in some way will always be a crucial and needed part of expanding mankind's achievement, meaning, and variety of life on Earth.
It is a culture that must change, yes, a culture that must improve it's abilities to be sustainable, and to much MUCH better husband it's resources if it wants to continue broadening mankind's choices, freedom and well being, but that it is a culture well worth saving, a culture that provides it's own unique brand of human community, art, quality, and yes, even embodies the spiritual quest to bring mankind closer to the Creator, as man joins in the creation process. We have only now began to travel down the road to real, humane modernism.
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I beg you to notice that neither of the above options mention "specific" technologies or techniques. No mention of solar, wind, nuclear, coal to liquids, gas to liquids, corn to fuel, or for that matter, no mention of return to horses and subsistence farming.
Take notice that neither of the above options have any outside sources, as far as where to get the technology, what technology is mathematically proven, what options are tested by the government.
This is because neither of the above options are "scientific". We are not talking about "means to an end" but about "meaning" itself.
We are not talking about what is "doable" but instead about what is "desirable".
In fact, we are looking at two aesthetic choices. Both recognize the serious, perhaps catastrophic, effects of resource depletion. Both recognize the serious, perhaps catastrophic issues of environmental degradation. Both acknowledge the need for IMMEDIATE AND GREAT CHANGE. Both admit to the need for sacrifice, perhaps great sacrifice.
So how do they differ? In the goals. One sees a culture not worth saving, in which resource depletion and environmental degradation become almost "tools" to speed the death of what is viewed as an evil and diseased culture.
The other sees a great, perhaps the greatest, culture facing a crisis.
It feels and sees the art of the motorcar, the aircraft, the lit cities as one of the triumphs of human history. It sees television, radio, the personal computer as the triumph of ages of sacrifice, leading to better living for the masses. But it realizes that the consumption of resources to build and maintain this culture have been very high, and may not be sustainable at this level. But the goal should be to try to salvage the art of the technical culture by using the tools of the technical culture....research, inventive use of materials, art, design, combinations of management, financial, and technical skills to improve our sustainability, to maintain a culture of prosperity, choice, inventiveness, and yes, mobility.
It is the debate above that determines the action we take: Emotions become Thoughts. Thoughts become words. Words become actions. And actions, in mass, become culture.
I once heard a historian say of the Fall of Rome, that the biggest single factor among all the factors that caused the event may have been "the lack of collective will to save Rome."
So it may be for the "Modern" technical culture.
Go back to our two options. Option (a) says essentially, "Modern technical culture cannot be saved, and even if we could save it, we should not."
Option (b) says, "Modern technical culture can be saved, partially by using the very tools that created modern technical culture, and if it can be saved, IT MUST BE SAVED.
Which of these two choices we side with will be moral and aesthetic decisions, not technical or "scientific" ones. It is the GOAL that will construct the game.
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Now, I hope you see why I sign my work....
Heading Out, send the text above to Magen Quinn, I am always looking to score "brownie points"! ;-)
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
So the real issue is how to control the human population:
Option (c) let nature take its course (famine, pestilence, nuclear war)
Option (d) forced sterilizations, genocides
And I wish I had the kind of money it takes to decamp for Kiwiland myself!
Man, I've spent the last 30 years thinking that I really like industrial modernity -- well, at least modern medicine and cars and Interets and all that -- but that having 7 billion humans on the Earth fighting like cats and dogs over resources would just become a nightmare ... which it has.
I suppose the "optimistic" answer is to build thousands of Arcosantis where we can all live in little cells in the beehive, but this to me is not about what humanity and freedom and dignity are all about.
I'm certainly no expert on food production, but it is my understanding that while organic farming can be more profitable per acre than standard farming (less use of fossil fuels & chemicals), the yield per acre is lower. Therefore, we will need more land, using organic farming, to provide the same amount of food that we do now. This sets up the problem of land used for food versus fuel--both food producers and fuel producers will need more land. Of course, a lot of small "Victory Gardens" will help quite a bit.
It seems to me that we are rapidly approaching a point where most people's primary focus will be on how to pay their food and energy bills. I wonder if the energy riots we have seen on the Indian subcontinent are a sign of things to come worldwide.
In an interview a couple of years ago, Jay Hanson (I checked the link, and it is no longer available), said that most people are getting too hung up on the technical aspects of post-Peak Oil. He said the key problem is how do we control men when there is no economic growth?
I have wondered for some time about Jay's choice of his retreat, the Big Island of Hawaii. I am beginning to wonder if he chose Hawaii because he thinks that the biggest threat we face results from food and energy riots, i.e., the Pacific Ocean is one heck of a big moat. I wonder if the Big Island could technically be food self-sufficient?
Not with its current population.
I cook as a hobby, and I grow food as a hobby, and I study food plants as a hobby. It shocks me that even those that come from low food regions in a few years of the Plenty of the US, adopt the same food habits of the Rest of the Citizens, or more accurately the wasteful folks.
We as Americans waste a lot of Food. We have laws in some cities that state that once its cooked and not eaten by the customer, we have to throw it out. We have "Grand Buffets" where the left over food could feed some families for WEEKS!! It all goes to waste!
So yeah, as the end of our "Easy Eating" Lifestyle comes to and end we will see the end of the Buffets, or at least the end of them as we now know them to be.
Hey I am moving to a small town,, How many buffets are there, I bet not a single one. Gee I wonder why??
I used to volunteer at a soup kitchen, and they received boxes and boxes of donuts that weren't quite fresh enough to meet Dunkin's standards. I wonder how many donuts Dunkin and KK toss every day
- 500 acres produces 7 million pounds of guava
- 2,700 acres produces 36 million pounds of papaya
- less than 400 acres produces over 1 million pounds of taro, a traditional food of Pacific Islanders
This all sounds very productive to me. With over 60,000 acres of agricultural land being recently released from sugar cane production, farming just this land would require supporting about 3 people per acre to be self-sufficient on the Big Island. Statements from John Jeavons indicate that biointensive farming would support over 10 people per acre sustainably."I'm certainly no expert on food production, but it is my understanding that while organic farming can be more profitable per acre than standard farming (less use of fossil fuels & chemicals), the yield per acre is lower."
I'm no expert either. I mentioned a few days ago that I had the pleasure of hosting Joel Salatin last weekend. He is a truely organic beef and poultry farmer in Virginia, not simply "organic" as a marketing ploy as the word has largely become.
He convincingly explained to me his methods that are low input and high yield. He improves his land each year and keeps a larger number of animals on his land than any of his neighbors. The quality of life for his charges is very good as well--all free range, grass fed and "grass finished"--no feed lot time before slaughter. The chickens follow the cattle sequentially on the same pastures, providing a more complex nutrition to the pasture grasses. In his philosophy, the health of the pasture is what comes first and the health of the animals follows from that naturally.
So there is some hope for greater efficiency in organic methods--though it is definitely more labor intensive.
-Matt DC
Meat Consumption and Risk of Colorectal Cancer
Ann Chao, PhD; Michael J. Thun, MD, MS; Cari J. Connell, MPH; Marjorie L. McCullough, ScD; Eric J. Jacobs, PhD; W. Dana Flanders, MD, ScD; Carmen Rodriguez, MD, MPH; Rashmi Sinha, PhD; Eugenia E. Calle, PhD
JAMA. 2005;293:172-182.
full paper is free but requires registration.
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/293/2/172
The risks from very modest quantities of red meat can probably be lessened somewhat, but not completely, by a high fiber diet. From PMID 16452248: "In colonic exfoliated cells, the percentage staining positive for the NOC-specific DNA adduct, O(6)-carboxymethyl guanine (O(6)CMG) was significantly (P < 0.001) higher on the high red meat diet. In 13 volunteers, levels were intermediate on the high-fiber, high red meat diet."
It's probably not very healthy for the aquifer, either. Nitrates are usually at unaccpetable levels within several miles of animal farms.
It's not so great for other reasons as well. Land use is greater and irrigation needs are generally greater to much greater than for plant foods.
Locally grown organic legumes are a better bet.
See:
Asia Pac J Clin Nutr. 2004;13(2):217-20.
Legumes: the most important dietary predictor of survival in older people of different ethnicities.
Darmadi-Blackberry I, Wahlqvist ML, Kouris-Blazos A, Steen B, Lukito W, Horie Y, Horie K.
http://www.healthyeatingclub.com/info/articles/diets-foods/Darmadi.pdf
It's probably not that legumes are all that. But, they have no heme iron, they are generally anticarcinogenic when cooked, they have lots of dietary fiber, and they are completely devoid of oxidized cholesterol.
First lots of water - essentially irrigation to protect against drought, where the water is pumped from underground aquifers.
Secondly fertilizer - generally made from natural gas. Essentially because monocultures tend to strip the nutrients from the soil (called by some mining the soil), so there is this constant need to replenish these nutrients.
Finally pesticides - generally also petrochemicals of one sort or another.
Of these, we have already talked a lot about limitations involving both oil and natural gas, so let me focus on water instead:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer
Water problems aren't just a problem for agriculture. There was a comment here at TOD about a place in Oklahoma where oil drilling had been suspended - the local town no longer had sufficient quantities of water required to support the drilling.
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/2/22/122330/042#2
Thank you for bringing up the Peak Aquifer article.
The USA is surrounded on 3 sides by gazillions of gallons of water and yet we threaten to run dry. Needed is a Manhaten Project level desalinazation effort, not just for the sake of US citizens, but for citizens all around the world who are running short of fresh water. Its amazing that MSM has not picked up on any of the Chicken Little warning signs. It will be too late when the sky does fall.
You might see more electric vehicles getting used in agriculture, making a more direct use of that wind.. either that, or that farmers would commit a portion of their cropland for biofuel that would be grown to assist in their own energy needs. If anybody can find a way to improve eroei, I'll bet a farmer can.. the original scientists.
There is an easier way to fix nitrogen in the soil. Some plants do it for you. Soybeans are a noted example.
Actually its the symbotic bacteria 'in the roots' that fix the nitrogen.
If you could convince the bacteria to do this via genetic re-engineering w/o effecting other plant 'features'....
"I assume total food production globally has peaked or will peak very soon."
This is the most perceptive, and most alarming, observation I have read in some time. It condenses and encapsulates most of the biodiesel discussion we've been having, as well as many other threads.
Think about this: roughly half of the nitrogen in human biomass comes directly from the natural gas based fertilizers. As we hit peak gas, we probably hit peak food.
In addition, half of cropland use prior to the invention of the internal combustion engine went to feeding horses and oxen for primary power and transportation. The conversion of this cropland to direct human consumption helped feed the green revolution.
Now it looks like we'll be drifting back to having half our cropland go for transportation; but via biofuels and ethanol.
Thus, we should expect the decline after "peak food" to be quite steep. Very sobering.
Another downside is that 19th century cities had large crews sweeping up horse manure, to be transferred to farmers in surrounding farms, which produced food for the cities. There don't appear to be such manure production possibilities from vehicular transportation.
The figure that sticks in my head is 40% of total nitrogen comes from Nat. Gas; it was in some science mag some time back.
jim
I am trying to get some theoretical numbers behind this concept.
Let's say natural gas peaks in 2010, and declines 2% per year. Let's also assume a 1:1 ratio in food production losses (natural gas provides most of the feedstock for fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides).
That would mean an 18.3% loss by 2020.
Let us then factor in losses from the decline of irrigated fields, orchards and pasturelands, due to the skyrocketing cost of pumping water from declining aquifers. Let us assume 5% off the top.
Let us also assume a 5% off the top loss from the associated effects of peak oil (marginal farmers are driven out of business by skyrocketing costs for transport, fuel for tractors, plastic hoses and drip irrigation lines, etc.)
Now we are running at about 72% (rounded up).
Let us then assume that 10% of the remaining croplands are converted to energy sources (vegetable oils for biodiesel, carbon crops for ethanol, wood for fuel, etc.).
In this model we are down to 62% of present food production by the year 2020.
Please show me how this model is wrong.
-- jim burke
a)natural gas decline will be greater than 2% -it depletes faster than oil
b)there are other ways to generate fertilizer - compost, manure etc - not as good as NG, but can supplement
c) the main thing is that we could grow MORE food if everyone grew a bit of their own (20-30%) that way less fuel would be used to transport food and people could use their own gardens compost to replenish the soil. one acre of permaculture can grow food for alot of people - a different and better model than current large scale ag.