<DrumBeat: January 22, 2008 The Oil Drum The limit of the statistic R/P in models of oil discovery and production>

432 comments on The Fallacy of Reversibility

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bruce from chicago on January 21, 2008 - 9:56pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Todd, you recommended the book a week or so ago and I purchased it online from Deepdiscount. It is amazing the breadth of knowledge agriculturalists had at that time, especially in regards to soil management and cover crops such as alfalfa and clover. For someone like me who has a small farmette, it will be very useful. I’ve been browsing through it for the last week.

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Nate Hagens on January 21, 2008 - 11:53pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I too ordered it a few weeks back when Todd recommended it. Its a thick bugger and I've had trouble keeping it out of my fathers mitts. Much of it over my head, but I guess thats the point of ordering it.

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jim burke on January 22, 2008 - 2:30am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I just ordered it also. Thanks for the tip.

Stuart is probably correct about the continuing growth of industrial agriculture. The merging of the energy markets with the food markets means that the price of both shall move upwards in lockstep. Both our engines and our bellies will face progressive starvation.

This is even now being played out in the third world. Their farms are industrializing and growing food, fiber and energy for export, leaving the billions living on less than $5 a day to be priced out, with little chance of gaining access to cultivable land.

There are several questions: will those hundreds of millions quietly starve? At what point will there be revolution? What form will that revolution take; nihilism and suicide vests? retro Maoism?

I suspect that, at least in the first world, massive bankruptcy, combined with massive foreclosures and rising food and energy prices, will force democracies to turn to increased redistributionist policies, protectionism, and possibly fascism.

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tirwin on January 22, 2008 - 11:23am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I could be mistaken but I think that revolutions are started by the middle class with input from guilt ridden or disaffected uppers. The poor pick up the torch a bit later as they are more likely concerned with finding the next meal.

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jim burke on January 22, 2008 - 12:27pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I believe you are right.

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jim burke on January 22, 2008 - 3:06pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Actually, revolutions are often started by first world elements within third world countries (Lenin & Mao, Pol Pot, and Sindero Luminoso in Peru; western educated/influenced leaders leading largely uneducated workers and peasants). But revolutions can also be started by reactionary third world leaders like Ayatollah Khomanei.

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jim burke on January 22, 2008 - 3:47pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

As Stuart's analysis sinks in, I realize this is the worst news I've heard in a long time.

Agribusiness -- a product of the "age of oil", -- has been primarily concerned with producing food and fiber. It dominates the best soils in the world, and is still in the process of displacing traditional farmers.

If the food markets hadn't merged with the energy markets, we would expect that we would now be experiencing "peak agriculture" along with "peak food". This (hopefully) gentle decline would give societies time to convert to whatever replaces agribusiness.

Instead, agribusiness is switching to producing motor fuels, so "Peak Agriculture" is now divorced from "peak food."

As agribusiness increasingly grows biofuels for our vehicles, it profits even as it diverts land and energy away from feeding people. Thus, peak agriculture is a long way in the future, while peak food is now, with a vengeance.

Furthermore, as we look at Hubbert's curve as it descends into the Oldavai Gorge, we are right to wonder at what point industrial agriculture no longer functions properly.

Can steel for tractors and combines be smelted using renewable energy? Can fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides compete with ethanol and biodiesel? If they cannot, then it is difficult to see industrial agriculture surviving beyond mid-century. And if it continues to grow up to the end, we may see a spectacular crash.

Meanwhile, of course, we can project that global famine is coming on like a freight train.

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silence on January 22, 2008 - 6:23pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I've got serious doubts as to whether we'll see the current corn-based industrial agriculture continue as far as midcentury in much of the US. Many areas depend on nonrenewable aquifers for their irrigation, and have only a 20-25 supply of water remaining. We're going to run out of water long before fossil fuel limitations seriously constrain American agriculture.

Depending on how we use the last few years worth of it, we will either transition to some sort of available-rainfall based agriculture in much of the midwest, or experience another dustbowl.

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DaveMart on January 22, 2008 - 6:55pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

..or you could charge properly for water, and use some of the many conservation techniques available, such as are common practise in Israel, for example.

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silence on January 22, 2008 - 7:27pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Conservation would slow the depletion rate, but not solve the problem that we're trying to irrigate with a nonrenewable source of water. Even if we launch a massive conservation effort next year (which realistically, isn't going to happen) we will likely see exhaustion of several major aquifers within my lifetime.

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FuturePundit on January 22, 2008 - 8:30pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

We can smelt metals with nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal power.

Whether this trend is bad news for you personally depends on your income level. With a high enough income you'll be able to buy more expensive food and put more expensive biodiesel in your gas tank.

But is competition for agricultural product between food and biofuels really the worst possibility here? Seems to me not. What would be far worse is if agriculture has a very low EROEI. Take away the oil and we have a hard time running agriculture if that is the case.

By contrast, with a high EROEI from agriculture while part of the agriculture will get shifted to producing energy at least the remaining part that produces food has energy from its own fields to power it. I find that comforting. I just have to earn enough money to afford to buy the resulting product.

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jim burke on January 23, 2008 - 1:40am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

So you and me and 100 million others can afford food on the table. The other 6.4 billion (plus interest) can all go to hell.

I wonder if those "others" will let me enjoy my meals in peace....

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WNC Observer on January 23, 2008 - 9:40am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Can steel for tractors and combines be smelted using renewable energy?

Yes, at least on a small scale. CSP arrays can produce a lot of heat, or a large WT array could produce a lot of electricity for an electric furnace; maybe both could be combined. It might be possible (indeed, we DO have to figure out how to MAKE it possible) to set up sufficient capacity to recycle metals from old worn out equipment in order to make new equipment.

If we can't manage this, then sooner or later we will fall all the way back in the neolithic.

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432 comments on The Fallacy of Reversibility

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