DrumBeat: September 1, 2006
Posted by threadbot on September 1, 2006 - 9:12am
Topic: Miscellaneous
[Update by Leanan on 09/01/06 at 9:16 AM EDT]
United States faces bigger worries than ‘hot’ fuel
We’ve all heard the term “peak oil” but “net exports” are an even graver oil market fundamental. Current statistics (not projections) indicate global oil exports are falling three to four times faster than oil production, which is down 1.3 percent since the start of the year.
Preparing for a Crash: Nuts and Bolts
This essay is intended to address the serious “peaknik,” that is to say a person who accepts as axiomatic that Peak Oil will occur and that the consequences will be devastating for most of the world’s Homo sapiens sapiens. As one of these people, I am often frustrated by the lack of practical suggestions for what to do to survive the Peak and the Crash.
Nigerian Oil Workers Declare 'Warning Strike'
Nigerian oil unions have declared a three-day 'warning strike' to protest worsening violence and kidnapping of workers in the Niger Delta. The unions are demanding steps to improve the situation or they may withdraw their members from the region, indefinitely.
Eni declares force majeure on Nigeria oil field
Italy's Eni declared a force majeure on 50,000 barrels of crude lost at its Brass River oil field in Nigeria after a sabatoage attack late last month damaged its pipelines, a company official said on Friday.
The Curse of Natural Resources
Many countries with enormous reserves of oil, gas or precious metals, are plagued with disproportionate poverty, corruption and mismanagement. Would the people in Nigeria, Congo or Russia be better off without their natural gifts?
Unlike Germany, the world's largest wind-power generator, Japan lacks the national grid needed to iron out supply fluctuations from wind projects.
Gulf Oil Discovery Lifts Hopes for New Geological Play
A deepwater discovery reported Thursday underscores the growing importance of a geological formation in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico that's only recently become accessible to crude oil and natural gas producers.
'Probably the demand (from solar companies) is twice the current supply,' he said.This imbalance makes prices high, and is part of the reason photovoltaic solar energy, which converts sunlight into electricity by chemical reaction, must be heavily subsidized to compete with the price of electricity from fossil fuels.
The wrong road to fuels of the future
Not sure if it has been discussed (I can barely keep up with what day it is lately), but here is an excerpt:
I know the feeling. There is so much reading from the previous day's drumbeat alone when I come in the office in the morning that my work gets sloppy. Nothing like "pulling up a chair, grabbing a cold one, and watch".
BTW, there was an article on the energybulletin the other day arguing that the Soviet Union dissolved because of PO. That is a totally different argument then what you quote. And I have read many other reasons too.
But when you think of actually building the whole infrastructure, I dont think it's worth it.
But anyway, us (like in very well educated us) know that it's not the solution. For the layman, I think they feel it is. So this Idea will keep up until 2 things happen :
- Gov subsides shrink to none (companies goes bankrupt)
- Oil go on rising and shortage in diesel makes growing stuff more of a challenge.
If you take a look at the last ethanol discussion we had here (boy it was an hard discussion) common sense won't restrain people from believing in anything.I have to admit that I was surprised at how confused people got over this issue. A small percentage didn't seem to get it, no matter how many different ways we tried to explain it. But Michael Wang did ultimately write back to me and agree with my premise. I am trying to decide whether to post one more essay on our last exchange. It is a matter of me explaining why it is important that we get it right - the consequence of failure will be huge in a Peak Oil world. In his response, he agreed that I am correct about the efficiency argument, but says we have to look at other things. I told him that I agree that this is not the full sum of the debate; I was just addressing 1 false claim that is often repeated.
But, my next essay is going to be a guest essay from a very well-connected (politically) person who is supporting California's Prop 87. It is essentially a rebuttal to some Prop 87 essays that I wrote. I think it should generate some interesting discussion, especially from people who are sick of hearing about ethanol. I have the essay, but I will probably wait until early next week to post it.
If organized opponents of Prop 87 could find someone extremely knowledgable about the problems with ethanol and highly credible, it might help them stop the proposal. If you do get involved, you may find yourself the subject of a smear campaign. At least, they will paint you as the stooge of the oil industry. You no doubt know this. Good luck, and watch your back.
To my understanding, this means that more btus are needed for max. temp and optimum combustion thus efficiency of gasoline as a motor fuel then ethanol.
And if that's the case, could engines not be specifically designed to run on E100 thus overcoming a large portion of the BTU deficiencies you oft mention?
The second issue is obviously the more difficult design change. A modern engine can probably change its fuel/air ratio with a simple parametric tweak to its software.
I think the most important is the compression ratio. Increasing the compression ratio has been shown to improve gas mileage of E85 vehicles. Instead of a 25% drop in fuel efficiency, they only have a 15% or so drop.
I'd think we'd want to know the conversion efficiency from chemcial potential energy to practical kinetic energy.
What's the story with Cilion? San Jose Merc News (Business section) today says they can be profitable with corn based ethanol production even if oil drops to $40/barrel. Have you covered Cilion before?
Everyone looks to France beacuse it has almost 80% of its electricity coming from nukes, as a result of strategic public policies.
I'll bet that the Danish government is behind their wind power development.
The "solution" presented by Steve Chapman is pure government planning, of the same kind he's rejecting. [ironic]How does the government know that fossil fuel are bad? The market are asking for more, how is it that taxes are needed to foster alternative energies? Let the market decide how and when and leave it to its own. [/ironic]
And how is it that USA has become the biggest energy consumer in the world? How come those wasteful SUVs in the first place? Maybe through the "market". People want SUVs let them have them!
So what's the answer? IMHO markets AND governments. Maybe through taxes on fossil fuels, maybe through direct investing (as France did with nuclear energy).
Best
Fernando
You might lose that bet !
Only indirectly is the Danish Gov't behind their remarkable wind industry.
- The Danish Gov't published a survey of in-service performance for various wind turbines. This brought more orders to the good models; and bankruptcy to the poor performers.
- They enacted a carbon tax. An indirect wind subsidy.
- They made it easy (via laws) for a co-op of farmers or city-dwellers + a farmer to buy & operate wind turbines. At one time, almost half of the WTs were owned by these co-ops.
- The national grid was encouraged to take wind power, even when additional lines were required.
Denmark did NOT spend massive amounts on R&D, or have gov't owned WTs. Rather they provided fertile ground for the industry to grow. Quite different from France.But, part of the argument still holds. How does the Danish government know that "Wind is better". Why is it "distorting" market signals to provide "fertile ground"? The Danish government HAS diverted resources from some part of their economy to another place, probably a different one the market would have chosen.
How is subsidizing wind energy different from subsidizing corn ethanol?
What the government (the public) should subsidize in our society is a pretty fundamental expression of our values I suppose. We should ask this question honestly in a broader sense.
We seem to value mobility, in fact we have become dependent on being mobile in order to survive - in this way we are like the nomadic people, except that we return to the same bed every night. Is it possible that we will every come back to seeing the value in living in place, without he need for so much mobility? If that happened, I think then the questions over what the public should subsidize would change quite a bit.
Are we dependent on independence? What a conundrum!
('Conundrum' - this could be Canada's Oil Drum!)
As far as valuing mobility. I don't really dispute that, but it makes me think about how much we seem to strive for 'safe isolation' .. gated communities, soundproof cars, personal entertainment systems, .. there is a lot of great comradery in our culture, too, but I think of the millions of people sitting together or apart, and all watching TV. When I was a little kid, I wasn't allowed to watch TV until my folks realized it was all the other kids in the carpool were talking about, and my brother and I were miserable outsiders..
Well for the direct answer, subsidizing Wind, I contend, is one, wise direction to move our energy resources towards. There is a great return, simple proven technology, and the likelihood of a long future for this abundant resource, without serious downsides like soil depletion, increased water dependency and need for signifigant inputs like NG or Oil to produce it.
From another side, many see the benefits of wind without the helping hand of a gov't grant, so it could be it'll move forward fine without it.. that is, unless it needs it just to Compete with other subsidies like Corn, Ethanol, life-supports for GM and Exxon and the Contras.. See how Amtrak's subsidy could hardly be expected to armwrestle with The Auto Industry's favors, sweetheart deals in Saudi, the Highway system and the Airports..
Who's grant buried Grant in Grant's tomb?
Bob Fiske
Apart from point 4 (The national grid was encouraged to take wind power, even when additional lines were required.) this doesn't look like a subsidy, rather, facilitation of the "market rules" (point 1), removing red tape (point 3) and having a general incentive to carbon free energy (point 2) NOT specifically wind.
And this last may even have covered the costs of point 4 at least in part.
While subsidizing corn ethanol means gobs of money, even more so for subsidizing nuclear.
probably a different one the market would have chosen
Does this means you assume that "the market" choose wisely?
The market actually "choose" SUVs!
In my opinion the important choice is not what alt-energy you fund, but: do you fund just research, or also production?
I'd say fund a broad array of research, but stay out of production funding. That messes up the market and prevents us from knowing what is working.
"The Market", as you refer to this construct anthromorphicly, is composed of advertisers (aka persuaders, mind manipulators). They are the ones who "mess" with our minds and thus determine what "works" in the market place (albeit to a limited extent) and what doesn't. Ultimately, the things that "work" are those that pander to the irrational, child like desires of the masses.
Do I have a solution?
Sorry, no.
That is why I revisit TOD so often.
I keep hoping some of the way smarter people here will offer insights.
But ah, you got an alternative other than central planning?
Did the "free market" build our road network? I always found the case of Thomas Paine Bridge Designer, not revolutionist writer, to be very instructive.
http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/policy/renewableenergy/subsidies/wind/denmark/index.shtml
Unfortunately I could not find a source for the exact amounts envolved but I could guess they are in the billions.
http://www.aweo.org/ProblemWithWind.html
And another one:
http://www.countryguardian.net/denmark.htm
However, market mechanisms and Social Democrats don't mix.
Basic supply and demand. It's the same reason that wee-hours off-peak rates are low and afternoon rates are high.
Whereas the current situation is that utilities are selling off very expensive peak power at a loss, and subsidizing it with far higher-than-cost rates on cheap off-peak power, wind power, etc.
If you want people to invest in the infrastructure required to shift demand to periods of surplus (wee-hours or high winds, either way) you have to make it pay for them to do so.
My understanding is that at absolute zero, there's effectively little loss, and the power could be stored indefinitely until needed. This would seem to answer the problem of the erratic nature of wind power generation.
Flavius Aetius
My guess is that this would be work out to be a very expensive way of storing energy.
This is always the problem with energy, there are no lack of clever ideas for storing energy or converting it from one form to another. However, unlike manufactured goods which gain value by having more work done on them energy loses value the more you do to it. This is what makes oil such a miracle fuel. It is has extremely high energy density, it takes very little effort to get it (most of the time), you can carry it and store it in a bucket and you get the energy out by putting a match to it.
Other ideas for storing energy are pumping water uphill to a higher level reservoir and then running that water downhill through a turbine to retrieve the energy. High tech fly wheels can store energy. Splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen so that they can be recombined later in a fuel cell is another. There is also talk of solar power generators in which a large collection of mirrors focus sunlight on an absorber which becomes very hot. This heat is transferred to a pool of molten salt. This pool of salt is used to heat a fluid to drive a turbine and generate electricity. This way the periodic inputs of solar power are converted to electricity available on demand.
We can take it one step further by lisiting the storage techniques more abstractly as:
- Static potential energy (i.e. water behind a dam)
- Kinetic energy (i.e. a flywheel)
- Chemical energy (i.e. combustible hydrocarbons)
- Thermal energy (i.e. molten salt)
- Radioactive decay energy (i.e. U238)
Anyone out there who can think of other generalized forms of energy storage?Click on picture for article on magnetic superconducting storage
For more on energy storage concepts, try here:
And which "homo" did I attack?
and
http://www.energybulletin.net/18286.html
provides with a lot of interesting background about this
I've asked Georg Nehls from the german Bioconsult-SH about this. The company serves for environmental expertise in the coastal environment.
Dr. Nehls told me that the danish wind parks are being installed as scheduled, however he spoke of two, not three.
He supposed the information about cancelling those wind parks was probably "old".
His company did not furnish an opinion about the danish wind parks, btw ..
So- the 'information' on aweo.org seems to be old, at best ..
Good bet. Here's an article about it:
On a tiny island off the Danish coast, life after oil is working out just fine
It seems obvious to me that flexibility is more important than ideology. The Soviet Union was too inflexible.
The U.S., OTOH, incorporated socialist elements when necessary.
In some rare cases, like solar or wind power, I think the answer is clear (more is better), so government should use technology-specific subsidies to promote growth of those sources. But in most other cases, like vehicle efficiency, the government should avoid "picking winners"; instead they should increase CAFE standards and offer tax breaks based purely on a vehicle's MPG, and let the car companies and consumers figure out how best to get those lower numbers.
In short, the people can use public policy to guide and accelerate the market changes we want.
- The government sets a mileage standard: 40 mpg.
- The market figures out how to get there.
Where we continually bollix it up is when we legislate 40 mpg:except for this model, units built on Tuesdays, all cars in Alaska, or by those who gave money to "X's" PAC.
This shouldn't be hard to accomplish. It requires only a modest amount of integrity to enact a fair standard, which reflects the broad social direction, and is applied without exception across all sellers and purchasers.
Why can't we do this???
The straightforward answer (though not exactly easy) is to find other ways to help the car companies, like subsidizing their health care costs, or taking over their pensioners. In the long run this would be much cheaper, and much better for the car companies, who are gradually losing their light truck market due to gas prices.
We're afraid because it's the last thing actually "made" in America and even that is really not true anymore (parts from Mexico, China, Japan; assembled in Mexico; etc.)
We lose the US Auto companies and what else does the world want to import from us...perhaps mercenary services and military weaponry...we seem to excel at that.
they have had ample DECADES to come up with something...you can only protect so much..look at all the other manufacturing that has left the US. they have been plying thier protectionist political trade for years.
I feel sorry for the rank and file as they are getting the shorter end of the stick, though thier union wages are killing the price competitive part.
But we aren't Amercia, are we?
For instance, Japanese companies don't have to pay for health insurance in Japan, for current workers or retirees. Whether that's Japanese corporate welfare, or bad US public policy, it's not a level playing field.
I believe that there are some other such differences.
Now the difference is the classic newcomer (with lower pension obligations) advanatage, as well as more favorable labor deals.
I epxect that the "Japanese" will continue to expand their build in America system, but will be forever unable to acquire American companies because they have the union/pension obligations. If Detroit can't negotiate itself down to the same deal Japan has in American plants, I don't see much hope.
Japanese companies most certainly do pay for their employees' health insurance--not for all of it, mind you, but they do make a not insignificant contribution. Is this less than GM pays on average per employee? Surely, yes. But they do pay.
http://www.nchc.org/facts/Japan.pdf
So this 2% contribution is essentially identical to the 1.45% Medicare contribution made by US companies?
So beyond this healthcare insurance premiums have no counterpart in Japan?
I'd say that qualifies as a non-level playing field.
Also, do Japanese companies pay the equivalent of Social Security taxes of 7.45% (not including employee contribution)?
You sound like you're complaining about a somewhat socialist government (Japan) providing unfair support for its businesses... But who said that the world is a level playing field, or that life is fair? The idea that people and companies should start out from a position of equality (that they should receive according to their needs!) is a socialist/Marxist one.
And in any case, are you seriously arguing that American corporations, operating comfortably from their resource-rich base in the most powerful and economically advanced country in the world, propsering in one of the most favorable regulatory environments in all of American history, are suffering from structural disadvantages that undermine their international competitiveness?
Interesting. My impression was the Japanese companies had a more favorable regulatory/tax environment than American companies, but I don't have data either. It will be interesting to be on the lookout for evidence either way.
"You sound like you're complaining about a somewhat socialist government (Japan) providing unfair support for its businesses... But who said that the world is a level playing field, or that life is fair?"
I'm arguing from the point of view of economic efficiency, and good public policy. It's not
efficient for companies to lay people off in one country, and transfer capital to another to hire there, when the only difference is arbitrary regulatory preferences. It's also mighty painful for the people who lose their jobs.
"The idea that people and companies should start out from a position of equality (that they should receive according to their needs!) is a socialist/Marxist one. "
No, it's just a sensible position. As I discussed above, why have people tearing up manufacturing in one country and moving it to another to take advantage of arbitrary tax and regulatory differences?
Further, we started the discussion here on a question of public policy - should we institute a carbon/gas tax? One of the major obstacles to a such a sensible idea is that it would hurt american car companies. As a practical matter, it would be a good idea to appease car companies in order to get the tax passed. So, the question arises, is giving the car companies something in return for a higher CAFE, or a new tax, a bad idea? Well, if the car companies are indeed handicapped by regulatory/tax differences, then it is not unreasonable to give them something and the whole gordian knot is resolved.
Of course, if not then we have to decide how hard we're willing to hold our noses in order to bribe the car companies (and their employees).
If it weren't efficient, I question if the companies would be doing it. It seems the process of shifting production is the very essence of buiding efficiency by lowering costs. It certainly is painful for the people who lose their jobs, but I wonder if the solution doesn't have more to do with building social systems for educating and retraining workers to give them new opportunities than it does with keeping their failing employers afloat with some form of subsidy.
In any case, I agree that the important thing is to get some kind of carbon or gas tax passed, and soon. So if what you suggest would do the trick, I'm definitely for it. At this point addressing our overuse of oil and all the environmental damage that goes along with it has to be the absolute and overriding priority.
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
Well, companies respond to whatever incentives are out there, whether they're tax/regulatory, or more basic financial ones. That said, I suppose there's no question that lower wages are the main draw.
"It seems the process of shifting production is the very essence of buiding efficiency by lowering costs. "
I wouldn't describe cutting wages as building efficiency. I would describe building efficiency as raising worker productivity - doing something in fewer hours. Cutting wages, not so much.
When you cut wages by hiring someone cheaper you usually reduce productivity, because the new person is less well trained and experienced, possibly less well educated. The lower wages have to more than compensate for the lower productivity to make the switch worth it. Sometimes it isn't, as some manufacturers have discovered to their regret. Probably usually it is, but efficiency can't be described as going up - all you can say is that costs are lower.
The lower costs come from the middle class, and go to the poor and the rich. Is that an improvement? I don't know. It's certainly hard on the middle class person who is now, literally, on the street: unemployment in Detroit is now over 30%, and laidoff assembly workers are going to have a very hard time getting even minimum wage jobs.
"I wonder if the solution doesn't have more to do with building social systems"
They'll help a bit, but they can never begin to replace the good jobs that are being lost.
" keeping their failing employers afloat with some form of subsidy"
Well, that was my original point. If overseas employers are getting implicit subsidies (by say, being able to pollute, or using child labor, or not paying for healthcare, or getting artificially low cost loans from government controlled lenders) then helping a company here may be appropriate, rather than corporate welfare.
"I agree that the important thing is to get some kind of carbon or gas tax passed, and soon."
Yeah, I agree.
Average household debt
United States: $71,500
(No figure for Japan)
Average household savings
United States: $4,201
Japan: $45,118
Trade balance
United States: -$113,240 million
Japan: +$77,110 million
Current account balance
United States: -$105,900 million
Japan: +$56,783 million
Investment as percentage of GDP:
United States: 17.1%
Japan: 30.6%
Average CEO's pay as multiple of average worker
United States: 17.5
Japan: 11.6
Size of middle class
United States: 53.7%
Japan: 90.0%
Deaths of malnutrition (per million)
United States: 20
Japan: 3
Healthcare expenditures as percentage of GDP
United States: 13.4%
Japan: 6.8%
Average paid maternity leave (1991)
United States: 0
Japan: 14 weeks
Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births)
United States: 10.4
Japan: 5.0
Teen pregnancies per 1,000 teenagers
United States: 98.0
Japan: 10.5
Prisoners (per 1,000 people)
United States: 4.2
Japan: 0.4
Murder rate (per 100,000 people)
United States: 8.40
Japan: 1.20
Rape (per 100,000 people)
United States: 37.20
Japan: 1.40
Armed robbery (per 100,000 people)
United States: 221
Japan: 1
Energy units of oil burned annually
United States: 791.5
Japan: 234.3
Carbon dioxide released per person per year
United States: 5.8 tons
Japan: 2.2
Debris inhaled per person per year
United States: 81 pounds
Japan: 2
Percentage of all paper and cardboard recycled
United States: 8.4
Japan: 54.5
Source: http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/8Comparison.htm
They save way too much. That's one of the principal subsidies of Japanese companies, this very cheap source of capital.
The average Japanese is not all that happy. Their birth rate has plummeted because young women are educated and working, and refuse to live with an oppressive mother-in-law and an overworking, never-there salary-man, and live in tiny homes with no privacy.
As a country they can invest more because their military is limited to about 1% of GDP, thus freeing up enormous engineering resources for better things. This was not voluntary, but imposed by military occupation post WWII. It certainly has turned out to be a good idea, and I wish the US would move further in that direction, but it wasn't their idea.
Could we learn some specicic things from the Japanese? Sure. But I'm not sure if there's any larger lessons to be learned from them. I don't think they're tuned into a fundamentally better way of living. I certainly don't think their export driven system is a model we could follow: we would need another country to export to. I certainly think it would be a good idea for the US to greatly reduce it's balance of trade problem, though I think the best way of doing that is dramatically reducing oil imports...which brings us back to where we started.
I'd love it if the US followed Europe on a curve to lower population, even if that meant slower growth (by the GDP metric).
Absolutely. What you just described is one of the best-case scenarios.
The problem is immigration, and demographic momentum: Mexico is still exporting it's poor to us, and there's still a baby boom echo, which has to grow up.
If we want to reduce population growth we need to push Mexico to improve it's educational system, and open up it's economy so young ambitious Mexicans don't have to come to the US to open up their landscaping companies....or wash our dishes.
There's still the baby boom echo that has to finish, and I'm not sure that would be done by 10 years from now. Plus, life expectancy continues to rise (meaning death rates continue to fall), so there will probably be a very small increase for a while.
I suspect that in about 20 years the fertility rate would fall enough below the replacement rate to offset the falling death rates, and you'd have ZPG.
As for learning from the Japanese, I agree with everything you just said. I lived there for eight years, and you're dead on right. What we can do is not so much learn from the Japanese, but examine what other forms a modern industrial or post-industrial society might take. Europe provides (in my view) a more interesting object lesson than Japan, but we were talking about Japan, so I threw that out there.
Yeah, we've been pretty short sighted to ignore our oil imports. Carter started a very good plan, and succeeding presidents undermined it. If automotive CAFE had continued a gradual rise (even if it had been very gradual), and the truck loophole had been very gradually closed, Detroit (and the US) would be in much better shape now.
"As for learning from the Japanese, I agree with everything you just said. I lived there for eight years, and you're dead on right."
Thanks for your gracious reply. It's very nice to have constructive discussions.
"Europe provides (in my view) a more interesting object lesson than Japan"
Yeah, they're doing a pretty good job of planning for a transition to renewables. I have to like to say that I like their humane approach to an industrial transition, though it's certainly far from perfect, with it's very high unemployment.
A carbon and/or polution taxes fit exactly in this approach. On the encouraging side the revenues from it could go for subsidies/credits for startup (R&D,initial investments) on the alternative technologies. Now how exactly they are going to be separated is the tricky question, but if there is a will we could come up with some market based schema.
Bingo. Make the fossil fuels less competitive with alternatives by increasing their cost, while at the same time encouraging conservation. Then, you don't favor one of the alternatives over another. They are allowed to compete against one another on an equal footing.
Just look at butanol. It appears to be superior to ethanol, can be grown from corn, gets better gas mileage, but doesn't have the benefit of the ethanol subsidies. Because legislators have picked ethanol as the winner, this is the situation we have.
Tax fuel.
Add a federal "energy independance tax" on imported fossil fuels at $1/gallon of gas plus $0.25/gallon additional every year.
Add a federal "depletion tax" on fuel that looks like it may be depleted this century - uranium, fossil fuels, etc.
Add a federal "carbon tax" on co2-emitting fuels at the equivelent of 50 cents per the amount of co2 emitted from a gallon of gas.
Do all this at the producer level, where it's quite difficult to hide things.
Bam - we have a system which directs capitalism to solve the problems of a peak oil-aware world. Conservation begins to happen. Public transport gets built. We have a floor for corporate worst-case estimates of oil price, in comparison to alternatives. Right now all biofuels investors have to go up against the possibility that we'll plunge back to $15/gallon oil at anytime in the next 20 years and they'll go bankrupt.
Let all that money be pushed into top-down projects, with an eye for catching anything with the least bit of potential (does it really matter if we spend an extra 10 million on living expenses for 100 cold fusion / zero point energy people, if 990 million gets in the pockets of things that could work?). But shore it up with a much greater amount of corporate, state, and local expenditure, on projects pulled into being by demand created by artificially high fuel prices.
It creates some major problems - a significant recession, a much more regressive tax structure, and globalization putting our production in the hands of other nations. But the alternative, with the intelligence of the current government, appears to be to plow a few billion into ethanol for the sake of a few farming town's ballot boxes, dig a few thousand more coal mines, and bomb brown people in the hope that they'll give us oil, while oil companies get exponentially greater profits as the nation whithers.
These can be prevented by recycling the revenues in progressive ways, say by increasing the income tax exemptions.
Lou, this is correct--IF, and only if, governance processes are working as they should. When industry lobbyists have a huge role in drafting legislation, they work hard to game the system.
Examples: SUV's were re-classified as "light trucks," which exempts them from key safety, economy, and emissions standards. Synfuels have been a bad joke, and the recent energy bill falls a tad short.
Public policy will shape market solutions only if companies find it easier to work on creating solutions, rather than subverting public policy.
He said "This makes no sense. Congress is using the tax code to generate artificial demand for inefficient vehicles in the automobile marketplace," said Markey, who introduced the bill aimed at eliminating both tax breaks for SUVs.
I sure hope this passes. Perhaps since our US automakers are going bankrupt they are losing their lobbying power as well, so it can pass. This law has done a great deal of damage to our average mileage, and vehicle sizes in this country for too many years.
And, Markey can be another politician to add to our energy "good" list.
Incidentally, the guest essay I will be posting early next week on Prop 87 was written by someone who used to work for Markey.
Below is my energy-aware political dream team (representatives from both parties):
1 - Roscoe Bartlett (R - Maryland)
2 - Richard Lugar (R - Indiana)
3 - Tom Udall (D-New Mexico)
4 - Edward Markey (D - Massachusetts)
5 - Al Gore (Ex-presidential candidate & inventor of the Internet)
Let's keep them coming...we need more members.
BTW...if any of these senators are reading this, I highly recommend you dump your respective parties to form a new Independent party.
May I suggest the title POP (Peak Oil Party). You could even make it GO-POP (Grand Old Peak Oil Party) if would make the ex-Republicans more comfortable.
If I were to see such rebellion and forward thinking, I would then stop holding my vote hostage and give it up for the worthy cause.
Who's with me???? AHHHHHARRHHGGG!! (Oh my God...I'm being possessed by Howard Dean).
By the way...where the hell has Nader been lately.
I'd probably add John McCain for opposing ethanol long ago.
Include the Senator from Arizona? Ya or Nay?
Yes. I'm surprised how many readers here think government is interested in "doing right" by what they consider sensible standards, like health, safety, general welfare, the environment, even "justice". Google
and ponder that. The political system is merely another part of the game, essential if the corpo wants to maximize profits and dump costs. Best done on poor blacks overseas - they don't even count - but poor blacks here will do; they hardly count. The whole neoliberal mindset that the free market will solve everything is a large source of the corruption. What's the first thing a good neoliberal does? Game the system with lobbyists. Free market of many sellers and many buyers, free and willing with good information? Smoke that until you are stupid. Government regulates the system, enforces the rules. So the corpos buy the system and define how the "free market" gets "regulated".Iraq is no joke, NOLA is no joke, US prison complex, hell, there might not even be any missiles in the silos in the ABM system - it doesn't matter - the profit is there because the system is rigged. It doesn't have to work, better if it does not! Is it reassuring that empty silos are better than silos with missles? Hurts the head. Failure is more profitable than success because the corpos get to sell the same crap over again. And charge to clean up. Responsibility? Spare me.
Citizens and communities need to reassert control over the corpos. If Verizon or Exxon breaks the law, the states should revoke their right to operate, break up and sell their assets to community trusts. Chavez is right; that is the people of VZ's oil. That article in today's list that says "oh, how terrible that poor blacks get oil - they don't know what to do with it", what bullshit. They know and I bet Nigeria (after the revolution) stops selling oil shortly. Smart move to recognize it is their oil and their right - their necessity, it strikes me. They better buy a bomb or two from Iran if they want to stay independent.
Public policy will not shape the market until citizens take responsiblity for their economies and reassert citizen control over the market, resources and production.
Do my grandchildren have "standing" against Exxon for Valdez? I would suggest that they do. And that the waters and wildlife does too. Exxon has exceeded its share of the oxygen and should have been broken up years ago. Instead, they continue to destroy our planet. That's how our system works.cfm in Gray, ME
Think ISP, north but still in Maine. Rock On.
Obviously the US govt has lost the mandate of heaven.
First you say the government should avoid picking winners and then you say the government should declare CAFE as the winner to our energy needs.
and let the car companies and consumers figure out how best to get those lower numbers
Why is driving a 40 MPG car 20,000 miles per year more desireable than driving a 20 MPG car only 5000 miles per year?
Because you get to go to more places and take more stuff from there to there?
the government should avoid "picking winners"; instead they should increase CAFE standards and offer tax breaks based purely on a vehicle's MPG
First you say the government should avoid picking winners and then you say the government should declare CAFE as the winner to our energy needs.
I think that we ought to abandon CAFE and instead have a transfer fee & rebate, taxing low efficiency vehicles and paying buyers of high efficiency vehicles. Trucks and cars are not distinguished.
The reason to support this rather than a fuel tax is that poorer people can't buy a new car and higher fuel taxes will make things much worse for them without any increase in income. People who buy new cars are a small fraction of the population, i.e. the wealthy, and they can afford to drive low efficiency vehicles for a few years and then sell them. As a smaller fraction of society accures more and more of the income, this problem will get worse.
The rest of society has to get used cars, the previous new-cars buyers cars. If the pool of efficient vehicles available is high then that's good.
There is no substitute for a physically superior and more efficient vehicle fleet which isn't involuntary pain.
Reducing driving also helps---but it would help with high efficiency vehicles too.
Also, by working with a vendor-average the CAFE plan is less direct than a straight "freebate." With the freebate system Honda gets a benefit from having a higher fleet average MPG than Ford. If they are just both working to satisfy CAFE (and make it under the bar somehow), it is revenue neutral. Ford is not penalized for having a higher fleet MPG than Honda as long as it is CAFE legal.
The more efficient the better for whatever use.
Corn has a vastly higher energy return when burned for space heating than when processed into a liquid fuel prior to combustion.
Miscanthus, a perennial grass, has a high energy content, close to that of hard woods. It also requires few inputs for growth. It does not appear to be as well adapted to North America as switchgrass. Switchgrass is native to much of this continent and if memory serves, miscanthus is African. Miscanthus may be suitable to areas not conducive to switchgrass. Research is ongoing.
Using grasses as 'energy crops' (bizarrely excluding food from the meaning of this term), other than sugar cane, to produce liquid fuel will under all known conditions be uneconomic as long as there is demand for food and demand for solid fuel for space/water heating and even electricity generation. The tiny, if not negative, energy return from the grass based liquid fuel (excepting sugarcane based ethanol) falls too far short of the significant return from the grass based solid fuel. Transportation is indeed desirable. But not nearly so important as avoiding death by starvation or hypothermia.
But why even grow corn for a solid fuel when switchgrass is available and this latter requires fewer inputs, is drought resistant and can be grown on marginal agriculture land over much of North America. The answer to this question is that corn is more suitable for pellet stoves designed to accomodate wood, because of a lower ash content. A new generation of pellet stoves changes this equasion, though the current higher price of these advanced stoves remains a factor in the continued use of corn as a solid fuel.
No, it's from Asia. Miscanthus is "Chinese Reed".
There is a (very short - 'stub'-) article on the english wikipedia, a very exhaustive one on the german wikipedia which says, Miscanthus is very problematic from the ecological view. And it has a low bulk density, so it's not good for long distant transporting.
Peak oil is a liquid fuels crisis not a space heating/electrical one, thus the idea of converting biomass->electricity as opposed to LTFs seems rather shortsighted while biomass->space heating (essentially fireplaces) is also a step backwards IMHO.
North Americans literally float adrift in a sea of abundant energy for heating and lighting purposes, conservation and acceptance of societal adjustments on how and when we work/play could no doubt rectify many of our capacity problems.
I'll give you but one example:
In Japan, the lights in city offices (even at city hall) are often dimmed or turned out on every floor during the lunch hour.
You cannot possibly imagine how refreshing and smart an experience this is and yet for some reason we in North America would never dream of doing such a thing.
Why?
Pride, I think. It might sound almost Kremlin Face-saving of us, but I think we in the US have a sense that anything like dimming lights, especially in City Hall, would be some sort of concession, would be allowing our puffed-out chests to come back down to normal, human size again. Cheney's line about our lifestyle not being negotiable goes very deep, and I think on both sides of the aisle..
Like Vonnegut said.. 'Life is High School'..
I don't get the sense that you would be as tormented in a German High School (Gymnasium) for being one of the smart kids, but it was a definite taboo here. I was a Prep-school kid, and I felt this distinctly in a very smart and positive institution. Our history leaves us with a huge set of issues about 'doing the smart thing', or doing a compassionate thing.. which leaves us in exactly this kind of dilemma. It's very hard to let go of that brass ring, once you've grabbed onto it.
I think our pride is, in some respects, so fragile, that we would just die to think that we were being laughed at because we 'backed down'..
-present company partially excepted, of course..
It sure would be nice if the folks who think that way would hurry up and die, then. Wouldn't solve the overshoot but it would help.
And then there are future CEO types who work through lunch even when they don't have to...
Whereas American capitalism has created obscene inequalities (e.g. 46 million US residents without health cover) relative poverty for low level workers with a static minimum wage well below everywhere in Western Europe. Salaries for corporate boards and Wall Street have lost all contact with reality while ordinary workers are loaded with debt. Additionnaly the US consumes 25% of the world gasoline output with only 3% of world reserves. Your society is destroying the planet via Global Warming and your President refuses to sign up for even Kyoto because it would reduce the competitiveness of the US economy.
I think for every US resident your survival plans should include immigration.
cheers
OK. Can you pull some strings and get me into your country?
;-)
Now, not all of us can marry a Dane ha ha. It takes a LOT of money to leave the US and settle in Europe. I think you have to have something like a year's or is it 5 year's income, a job waiting for you, etc. This would be easy for the top 20% in the US to come up with, the rest of us just don't have the money to leave.
cheers
Oh, that's great to hear. I'm glad I'm Paris Hilton. I can add one more to the mix. All the guys love me. And the Girls. Hope your wife isn't one of them. Cuz I party on the South of France. And I have more money than God.
Unfortunately, it will take more than a few pols getting on board to make it into reality.
Oh-oh.
According to an article in yesterday's Missoula Independent, the coal has unusually high levels of sodium, and building the Tongue River railroad might need to overcome serious levels of political opposition.
Knowledgeable readers might comment on the sodium problem, but it might cause mineral contaminants to slag instead of forming more manageable residues, and perhaps it has implications for materials of construction.
Quote from the article:
"But as we are finding out, not all of Davison's investment schemes worked out so well. For one thing, Tongue River ranchers weren't very excited about having a railroad running through their ranches, and have fought the line tooth and nail. Plus, the Otter Creek Coal Tracts are located on the eastern edge of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation and the tribe has already sued the state once to preserve its cultural, historic and religious assets should the coal be developed. And finally, the coal there contains so much sodium that burning it in conventional power plants is highly problematic, hence, the market is limited or nonexistent until some new technology develops to deal with the sodium content."
http://www.missoulanews.com/News/News.asp?no=5938
In my travels yesterday, I noticed that The Falkland Islands supposedly has up to 60 Billion barrels of Oil... There didn't seem to be a lot of information on it.
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,334165,00.html
Is this being developed? Does anyone have a better idea of reserve estimates? Potential production rates?
Garth
If there really that much oil there, why didn't this story appear 2 years ago? You don't have to believe me -- from here, which is referenced at the Falkland Islands Department of Mineral Resources
Talk to me after somebody drills some more test wells...Not the next KSA by all accounts. Dont hold your breath
Subject: TEACHER ARRESTED
A public school teacher was arrested today at John F. Kennedy
International Airport as he attempted to board a flight while in
possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, a slide rule and a
calculator.
At a morning press conference, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said he
believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-gebra movement. He did
not identify the man, who has been charged with carrying weapons of math
instruction.
"Al-gebra is a problem for us," Gonzales said. "They desire solutions by
means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of
absolute value. They use secret code names like 'x ' and 'y' and refer to
themselves as 'unknowns', but it has been determined that they belong to
a common denominator of the axis of medieval with co-ordinates in every
country. As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say: 'There are three
sides to every triangle'."
When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God had
wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given
us more fingers and toes."
hahaha
"Not very long," answered the Mexican.
"But then, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?" asked the American.
The Mexican explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his Needs and those of his family.
The American asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"
"I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs . . I have a full life."
The American interrupted, "I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat."
And after that?" asked the Mexican.
With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers. Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can then negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant.
You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City, Los Angeles, or even New York City! From there you can direct your huge new enterprise."
"How long would that take?" asked the Mexican.
"Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years," replied the American.
"And after that?"
"Afterwards? Well my Friend, That's when it gets really interesting," answered the American, laughing. "When your business gets really big, you can start selling stocks and make millions!"
"Millions? Really? And after that?" said the Mexican.
"After that you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, take a siesta with your wife and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends."
And the moral is: Know where you're going in life... you may already be there.
I agree. It brought a smile to my face. It reminded me of my own situation. Opportunities keep knocking, but I am at a very satisfying place at the moment. My wife and kids are happy, and I am enjoying life.
Now to start a controversy: Who invented Algebra, the Arabs or the Indians? (or perhaps Al Gore? ;-)
Islamic Republic News Agency (Iran)
=========UK June gas output down 24% on the year: RBS index
Platts
http://www.energybulletin.net/19905.html
The drops in production are ALARMING.
Oil production down 13% on the month. Annual production down 18%.
Gas production down 24%. Yikes!
Time to get the electric heat pump installed!
This project was delyaed for a year; drilling through the dunes on the Dutch side failed last summer and they had to wait until this summer to try again, and succeeded.
The problem is that it is probably not sufficient to offset UK domestic depletion.
The bafflement of the economic community would be amusing if it were not so serious.
The only thing missing is a "sluggish growth in supply response".
http://www.dtistats.net/energystats/et3_10.xls
The UK is now a net importer.
I wonder if their predictions will still be so widely quoted if ng is actually around 20 in 2010.
We will form an orderly que and drink tea.
What fraction of exported oil is now traded this way?
Any trends?
What countries besides China are doing this?
On the "Prepare for a Crash" article. There are a number of flaws in that article, but I like to point out the following:
OK. Huge flaw number 1: Stone-Age culture is not the equivalent of hunter-gatherer. There were thousands of years that mankind in de Near East and Europe lived from agriculture.
Huge flaw number 2: There is enough iron and iron oar left to suggest that we won't go back top the stone age.
And the last enormous flaw is the suggestion that hordes of hungry people will turn into a vast army of marauders. The sad thing is that famine produces apathy, as the history of the Ukranian, Chinese and Ethiopian famines shows.
The article is bollocks.
I like how the Bushmen did it - they were pre-stone age, they didn't even have stone tools, everything was bone, hardened wood, etc. Come to think of it, in the book The Netselik Eskimo, I seem to remember that their only traditional stone items were bowls made of soapstone which is quite soft. Hunting tools like spears didn't use any stone.
The present population of Earth can not be sustained by paleo-lithic hunting/gathering.
The jury is out on what population a neolithic agriculture could sustain -- especially since it would undoubtedly retain some elements of the modern age. However, the limit to population is much more likely to be availability of water, and possibly breathable air than hydrocarbon reserves.
As any archeologist will tell you: The jury will be out forever. The reason for that is simple: We have not excavated but a tiny fraction from all stone-age stuff. The absolute majority of sites are destroyed forever for a large number of reasons. Washed away, dug out even during the stone-age for gold and/or fertile soil, ploughed under and torn in wars. And whatever other reasons there are.
Think about the simple fact that we excavated almost only settlements that were abandoned. Why? Because the settlements that weren't are our presentday cities and villages. You can't tear down you hometown for the sake of excavation. Recently knowledge about that has greatly improved though because the second worldwar brought the unique ability to excavate some stuff in current cities (You apparently can tear down a hometown for the sake of war.) and even those tiny bits greatly changed our view on history.
I keep remembering how in France they excavated a small Frankish settlement and found merely small huts made of mud. Conclusions were drawn from this that the Frankish settlers were poor farmers who'se culture was far inferiour to the Romans. Only recently the rest of the settlement has been excavated an lo and behold: The mud "houses" turned out to be nothing more than pigpens belonging to a huge wooden farm which was far superiour than anything in the neighbourhood.
Be very carefull with interpreting historical "evidence" I'd say.
I read the thread on agriculture, horticulture, and soil science and want to extend a hearty thanks to you and the other TOD participants for such an informative and fascinating discussion. In particular, I found your analysis of the topic highly compelling and intuitively logical. Great work! Thanks again.
Just leave it at that - Catton says it best, IMO.
This isn't the 1800s anymore. A lot more than just our knowledge has changed. The consequences of agriculture have caught up to us. In our climb up this long ladder of complexity, we've knocked out all the intermediate steps behind us, so when we fall, we're going to fall long and hard.
SOME farmeres have followed for 10 millemnia.
Others added ground up rocks and seaweed (Ireland) and made soil.
Soil from natural weathering 1 inch per 1,000 years. 7 inches of soil per year when one uses eathworms.
Most of what we consider "organic agriculture," like you'd find with an organic label on it, is simply how we did farming pre-Green Revolution, and that is extremely destructive--just on a slightly longer timeline.
And these methods you speak of... why don't you explain them to us rather than hand-wave?
Because I want you to explain how the works of
http://www.soilfoodweb.com/
http://www.remineralize.org/
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/terra_preta/TerraPretahome.htm
http://www.geo.uni-bayreuth.de/bodenkunde/terra_preta/
http://www.fungi.com/mycotech/mycova.html
Are the way things were done 10,000 years ago?
I'll be waiting.
Which substantially increases your cost and is tangential at best to the immediate goal of increasing yield--the kind of things that sometimes pop up in isolation, but can never take hold on a large scale because they have far too strong a ring of "ought" to them.
Eschew pesticides and petrochemical fertilizers, use plows rather than tractors, all the things you need to get a USDA Organic label.
As for your links, and for that matter, your Irish example as well, these are not agricultural techniques. They haven't a thing to do with agriculture. You could do these things without ever growing a single plant. These things are being used specifically to counter-balance the effects of agriculture. So, you're not really saying anything about the toll of agriculture, you're just offering a list of suggestions of things we can do to help heal the damage that agriculture causes. That's a pretty big difference. If I'm cut with a knife, and I put a band-aid on it, the band-aid doesn't prove that knives don't cut, does it?
While it does involve more work (which I did not do....curse me), there IS an effect on planting with and without compost/organics in the soil.
I have a small plot of land I've got corn on. This land has been in soy/corn/alphala rotation for years (20+, and using seed drills so the soil is compacted) Last year, I added organics (spent brewers grain) under the plants. Nice, green tomatoes and other plants. Had piles of pulled weeds/grain in the field also. This year the corn is either the correct height and green (over the spots where the grain/weeds were on top of the soil, or is yellow and not more than 2 feet high.
Tomato plants - either 3 feet high and has tomatoes on them or 1 foot high, with nothing. so you must have a different definition of tangental than I do.
They haven't a thing to do with agriculture.
Main Entry: ag·ri·cul·ture
Pronunciation: 'a-gri-"k&l-ch&r
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin agricultura, from ager field + cultura cultivation -- more at ACRE, CULTURE
: the science, art, or practice of cultivating the soil,
cultivate (DEVELOP)
[Show phonetics]
verb [T]
to create (a new condition) by directed effort
Therefore: cultivate soil is argriculture. Your claim that chainging the soil by direct action is not agraculture is not correct.
Its a vine. It has root hairs on the stem, In the wild, where it did once grow, it laid down and rooted wherever it touched the grown.
Using this.
Grow a 6 inch plant, pinch all but the very top leaves off of it. then bury the plant right up to the "chin" of this last tip, in a larger half gallon milk or other tube. Let this plant grow 6 to 9 inches tall. Then nip all the leaves but the very tip off, and gently lay this stem and bigger root ball in a furrow (trench) and cover the whole stem up to the "chin" of the tip, put a small paper collar to prevent stem damage and bugs from eating it. Water the whole length of the trench, and mulch with anything that will keep it moist and not moldy.
This method has never failed me, and I saw it on the Victory Garden on PBS about 20 years ago. The plants have a ton of root system and fruit soon as they get a few leaves going and grow till frost kills them. I have had mine 10 feet high and going strong.
Every plant has its gifts and its best growing condition. Hunters and Gatherers knew this. They know the land around which they live. Not taking more than they need, and keeping some for next time.
Learn how the world works around you before you try to second guess it. We won't all starve to death.
In the "prepare for the crash" 2,000 calories is the USADA's male 101 min. Calories. Really it is 800 for most adults, less than that and you loss muscle mass and strave. 1,500 or 1,100 or even 900 for a few weeks is okay for most healthy adults. The more you work the more you need to eat. WATER is what you really need to have in good supply, 7 days without it and you are dead.
7 Days without water and you are dead. Think about that and plan accordingly.
Charles Owens, I have eaten out of my wild front lawn enough to stay healthy and have my water too.
Have you?
Mine are usually a bit more leggy so I get 10-14 inches below ground.
Try putting things like rabbit dropping or other organic matter under the tomato plants.
Charles Owens, I have eaten out of my wild front lawn enough to stay healthy and have my water too.
Have you?
Hard to do on a 60X40 foot lot. Not alot of 'front lawn'
You state:
First of all, I don't know how anyone could make such a statement given that soils vary so widely. Some have formed in highly weathered materials that are dominated by silica, iron, and aluminum oxides and these tend to be somewhat- to extremely-infertile even in a "virgin" state.
Secondly, minerals are not merely removed from the soil profile by agriculture, but also by natural weathering and leaching processes and this has been the case since long before man arrived on the planet. I've done a lot of work in soils in the Southeastern US, where soil parent materials tend to be highly weathered and I can tell you, with certainty, that most of the plant-available nutrients occur in the upper couple of feet of the soil profile -- in the biotic zone. When you sample undisturbed regolith from below this zone -- in portions of the soil where no corn or alfalfa root ever penetrated -- you often find that it is quite acid and infertile. How could this be?
IMHO, the time-bomb in modern US-style agriculture isn't that we've irreversibly depleted our soils of their nutrients -- I don't believe that for a minute -- it's that we've forced our farmers into a situation where they can't afford to be generalists any more. When that happened, we traded good agricultural practices like crop rotation, manuring, etc. for a lot of expensive external inputs whose expense could only be justified by extremely high and unsustainable yields.
There is a lot of good literature out there on soil husbandry. If you haven't already done so, I would encourage you to do some reading on the work of E.B Balfour. I think you will come away feeling that it is possible to farm effectively, ecologically and sustainably.
As I said, I'm still trying to track down the ultimate source, but it was expressed as an average, so I'm guessing they had a given sample size and calculated the mean. I fully expect there to be fertile pockets, but if the average is 85% and it takes 50 years to regenerate an inch of topsoil, I don't think that bodes well for the prospects of post-peak agriculture.
That is true, but those processes lag behind the soil regeneration process. Agriculture doesn't just remove minerals directly, it also opens up fields to erosion, salination, and other second-hand effects that accelerate these natural processes. We didn't invent these things, but we did speed them up and shatter any semblance of balance that once existed.
Again, by analogy to the human body, we generate new skin cells, and old skin cells die, all the time. If I speed up the rate at which your skin cells die 100 times, and we do nothing to improve the creation of new skin cells, you're going to be in some pretty big trouble, pretty quickly.
That hasn't helped, but even before that, agriculture was killing off soil. Not permanently, no; soil always regenerates. But we can't just take a break from agriculture to let the soil regenerate, "OK everyone, no eating this decade; gotta let the soil regenerate." Fallowing is as close as we have to that, but even then the pressure to increase yields is too strong to leave it as long as it really should be left--this was the case even in the Middle Ages, leading to degrading soils. Soil is a renewable resource, but only on a fairly long timeline--no, not as long as petroleum, but long, nonetheless.
My concern is not that we can't learn to farm the land sustainably -- that has to be possible -- but it is rather that we have so far exceeded the numbers of people that can be fed via anything resembling a sustainable agricultural system, that eventual widespread famine may be inevitable.
To me, the word "farming" is synonymous with a thoughtful, sustainable way of life that is concerned with providing one of the most basic of human needs -- food. Personally, I feel that there are far worse things that a person could spend his or her time doing.
I'm interested in permaculture in large part because of its potential to help heal some of the damage we've caused: as a means of rebuilding soil and rewilding domesticates, for example.
Does it help or hurt to call a forest garden a "farm"? I admit your definition of agriculture tugs at the heart strings, but is that a good thing? Do we want to associate the idea of a "thoughtful, sustainable way of life" with what Monsanto's doing? I don't think there's anyone saying that they're not farming—but I don't think you could call it sustainable or thoughtful, either. So obviously, there's a lot of farming that's the opposite of thoughtful and sustainable ... so how can farming be synonymous with that?
I agree, you sound like someone I'd agree with more than not, and I'd love to have a long disucssion with you about soil some time just to beef up my own knowledge of the subject, but I also put great value on precision in the use of words. I've often found that a failure to do so creates confusion that can take a very long time to get around, that could have been entirely avoided if only we'd been more precise in the words we use.
I know a lot of cultivation techniques that help build the soil and create a real, thriving ecosystem that humans can be part of—but there's not a one of them that I'd call "agricultural."
I teach a college course with the innocuous title "Sustainable Gardening", but it really should be called "Sustainability".
One of the first things I do is go over definitions (garden, farm, agriculture, horticulture, whatever), and make it clear that "humans tweaking an ecosystem to favor the stuff that they like" runs the gamut from hideous ADM/Monsanto-style agritorture-with-attendant-industrial-feedlots, through more traditional mixed farming (read Wendel Berry), through organic, through no-till methods, through Fukuoka-style "Natural Gardening", through Permaculture/Forest Gardening, all the way over to swidden horticulture stuff.
There are modes of growing things that do indeed build soil. That's not the issue, really. There are also modes of growing, sustainably, that produce rather nice yields per acre. But not on that many acres at a time.
Based on a lifetime of studying soil science, ecology, botany, forestry, anthropology and agriculture, here's my take:
What sustainable ANYTHING boils down to is population. There are way too many people, by at least a factor of 3 (probably greater than 3), to live decently based on the energy and nutrient fluxes available on this planet. This 6-billion-people thing has been based on x-million years of stored sunlight. This particular party is over. There's nothing remotely on the horizon that can make up for that subsidy. It was an inheritance, we squandered it foolishly in 100 years, and no amount of wishing on a star will make it better.
The only question to me is how hard the landing is going to be. I don't think there is much chance of a soft landing at this point. Too much denial still. A rather nasty side effect of our (US) national innumeracy and religious anti-science trends.
Wow, I guess that makes me a doomer! Cool!
There's a saying going around here: Guess I'll pull up a chair, grab a cold one, and watch :-)
- Steve
PS - I'm doing a lot more than just watching...
Could you recommend any basic layman's text that covers the basics of nutrient cycles and flows, analyzing and comparing some of these different approaches?
I have no doubt that in say 500 years we will see a dramatically smaller human population on the planet, and the road to get there is going to have some nasty bumps. I want to do what I can to help winnow the best of what we've learned along the way as we partied through our fossil fuel inheritance, and to pass along as many nuggets of wisdom as possible, so the 7th generation and the 14th have more to go on than our monstrous garbage land fills.
In response to my assertion that natural weathering and leaching processes continually strip nutrients from the soil you said...
It is absolutely the case that soils are a dynamic system. At any given time, under absolutely "natural" conditions, any soil parameter -- be it top soil thickness, organic matter content, the level of plant available nutrients, the level of microbial activity -- may be increasing or it may be falling. So, it is not always the case that what you might consider "regenerative" processes are taking place. Like anything else, soils morph over time, and at times the slate may even be completely wiped clean by geologic events -- a land slide, a flood, by glaciation, etc. So, don't convince yourself that without human interference, soils would always be "progressing" toward some ideal, highly-fertile state. It isn't the case.
That said, in most temperate parts of the world, native soils tend to accumulate organic matter over time, and become more fertile. I wouldn't use the word "progress" or "ideal", just accumulation.
Yes, there are fires, glaciers, etc. In fact, I recall a conference at Hubbard Brook where a speaker suggested that sooner or later the northeastern forests needed another good glaciation to refresh the raw mineral content of the soil :-)
In the end, all species are successional, because the environment will change.
To make an analogy with petroleum, we had, in the topsoils of the eastern forests and prairies of the US, millennia of stored fertility, which we handled rather sloppily. Most of it is gone, and petro-chemicals take up the slack for the time being.
- Steve
You mentioned you are in the SE and you seem to have quite an understanding of soil.
I'm in the SE, and as I look at future scenarios I wonder if the SE will have problems because of historical and current land management practices (excessive logging resulting in topsoil erosion, etc).
What is your opinion of soil quality here and the potential future for creating locally sustainable communities relative to other places in the US?
To feed just the population of the USA would not take very much land , using todays methods.The rest could be used for energy purposes perhaps if we just concerned with our own livelhood and quit 'running in place' constantly for naught.
Its the rest of the world we are selling our crops to that lead to soil depletion, intensive cropping, highly erodeable land, drops in aquifers , high use of commercial fertilizers and so on.
It may be just an urban legend but I read somewhere that just the hog production of the state of Indiana could satisfy all the domestic demands for pork in this country.
However that being said, I submit that anyone on this site visiting a 'confinement feeding' operation would be very suprised at the inhumane treatment we apply to our meat animals.
I have worked some in broiler houses and its not something I share with folks who eat chicken. Pork confinement is far far worse.
We are all dining at the table with our eyes shut and don't wish to be reminded nor told of such.
I asked a farmer who was curing his own hogs why he didn't use his own that he raised on concrete. His reply was that they could not be home cured for they wouldn't 'take the salt'. He grew hogs but didn't want to eat those himself. He said that he preferred those raised on dirt. Now getting har d to find those so a few years back he just gave up on home curing and smoking pork. He used to do at least 8 or more at a time. His home made sausage was enough to make me give up on store brought. I had forgotten just how good real sausage was and just how disagreeable the store variety was. Garbage in a plastic wrapper. Turns rancid in just a few days. Smells awful and high priced as well.
And so it goes in the country who 'has the best food in the world'...sure. I am certain we are shipping 'the best' to other countries. For myself I can't touch a piece of 'prime steak' unless I slaughter it myself.
Out here where we grow the food the farmers nearby grocery store sells the worst in food products. We get the 'leavings'. The almost stale bread, near spoiled fruit, cheap low brand canned goods,and most expensive milk(4.95/gal). By law we can't sell our own milk to neighbors. My own cousin has a dairy operation and he can't even give me a gallon or gets in trouble.
The world is upside down.
I would completely agree that conventional farming (ie. the dominant form of farming today) kills land. However, it need not be that way. Probably the best reference on a sustainable farming system is the classic Farmers of Forty Centuries by F.H. King. You can read the book on The Soil and Health Library site if you'd like.
As an agricultural landowner and a farmer (versus the more conventional miner), I have a vested interest in sustainable agriculture. The problems you cite are real, but all can, and have, been addressed.
In my opinion, the greatest barrier to sustainable agriculture, after cheap energy, is the conventional toilet.
Not only that, but it wouldn't work out. Maybe in the short term, but not for the long haul. You would quickly run into the prinicple of 'Thoreau's Axe'.
No person is an island. To think you can be completely self-sufficient is ridiculous -unless you want to be a solo hunterer gatherer, hunting with a spear and sling, and not have much else to your life. A fairly unsatisfying existence from my vantage point. Everyone needs a community to truly have a good life.
It could work for most a couple of years. If you want any kind of a life, you can't life on your own. We're a social creature to begin with, and Thoreau's Axe will bite you in the butt real quick.
OK rant is over...
Of course, it doesn't help that the number of trolls has picked uplately.
...hardly seems like I'm being returned that favor. I'd normally shrug it off and think nothing of it in order to help maintain a courteous exchange, but you have been quite insulting to me in this discussion overall, so I do very much hope that you're not counting me in your "troll" count.
I don't see the necessity for this post at all. Just because I live by myself, doesn't necessarily mean I'm a Troll
What's this problem with Trolls?
My daughter called me a Cave-Troll tonight. I was flattered...
Is a troll something bad in the blogosphere?
Reply if you want. I probably wont be able to work out which thread it is on tomorrow.
It all smacks of Trollophobia to me.
I believe that those of us who are actually doing it recognize far, far more than sidewalk superintendents how extrodinairely difficult self-sufficiency is. I have no illusions that the physical systems I've installed will last forever. Or, that I will physically be able to do what I do now (I'm 67 and among other things, I fell the trees for our firewood, buck them up and split them; prune the orchard and grapes and put in the garden.). What I hope we can do is hang in there until society re-groups into some new, sustainable form.
As far as individual versus group survival goes, there are pros and cons to each. However, it is better to take a shot at it as a family than to do nothing at all.
Lastly, those of us who are doing it are better prepared psychologically for tough times. In other words, we want to survive.
Todd
First of, there's a about 1.5 kg (3 lbs) splitting axe for most firewood.
Secondly, there's the 3-4 kg (6-8lbs) sledgehammer axe for the really tough pieces of firewood, and also for using wedges to split really, really, really thick wood.
Thirdly, you need the good ole hand axe, around 1 lbs, as a utility or something you can carry in the woods, for hunting, making a fire etc.
Four, you need a cleaning or culling axe, to clean or cull the forest of inferior trees and saplings, so that the goods ones have better conditions to grow.
Five, you need the felling axe, unless you want to rely on a much more brittle saw to take down your trees.
And then there are the de-barking axes, axes for making logs for loghouses.
The list goes on and on. As for durability, buy a few extra axes, heads and handles. If nothing else you can sell them or barter. It will get you through the rough years until society stabilizes.
But the problem with these rough years is that before that we will have a downslide maybe lasting 10-20 years, before society collapses. You have to have the strength and resilience to last those non-chaos years without exhausting your resources and your willpower.
Holding our during 1-2 chaotic years is one thing, managing a slow descent before that is much worse. But the chaos won't last long, people won't have the strength. Once someone runs out of food, it's a matter of days before they're too weak to do much, and weeks until they die.
And I grew up homeless for the most part -so trust me, I know how to survive and more about self-sufficiency than most people will ever care to. And I am most certainly preparing to survive PO. Trust me on that one.
Tate: who made that axe? Out of what? Who brought it to the store you bought it from? Who made the car you drove there to get it in? What about the gas? Where'd it come from?
Now, you can take that axe and go completely off grid. But someday its going to break beyond repair. Then what? Can you make an axe? If not, you'll need to find a store (if one exists then) or a blacksmith.
That's the principle of Thoreau's Axe. He went into the woods to try and be sulf-sufficient, and discovered he could never entirely divorce himself from others without eventually reverting to a stone age caveman existence.
Todd, I think you have the right idea. Thanks for replying and for being courteous.
Thanks. I think what is going to get more people will be lack of practiced skills. These could be hunting-gathering skills or blacksmithing skills. BTW, I do have a small forge but only 200# of blacksmithing coal..plus I'm barely an amature but I could make an axe or saw.
The advantage that people like I have is that we have had to learn skills and practice them. Further, we have had to accept a life that most people would find unacceptable. For example, it isn't unusual to get snowed in for a week or two with the power off (This is when we rely on the PV system and back-up generator - and, yes, if there is no gas in the future I'll run it on wood gas.). We know people in the area who got snowed in for 6 weeks last year. These sorts of things build self-reliance because that is the only way to survive in the mountains where I am, even with all of today's technology.
At the same time, we have accumulated the "stuff" necessary for survival such as food preservation equipment and hand tools.
The movie, Testament was mentioned on another forum this morning and I happened to be watching it last night (we don't get TV but rely on our old tapes and DVD's). I think it provides an excellent vehicle for asking what the people in the town did right - very little- and what they should have done. This can be applied to how one might have to cope in the future.
Todd
A blacksmith can and once did make them.
I used to own 3 coal forges, 8 anvils and 4 leg vises and made
many items. Most farms had forges and the rest and 'made' some tools , depending on their skill.
I have seen a farrier hot forge an outstanding horseshoe in a very short time and it was far better than the 'cold' shoes one had to buy.
There is plenty of scrap iron(mild and carbon steel) laying around the country side ready to be forged.
Future survival will require metalsmiths. How many can do that? How many will be around after the supposed dieoff?
Sadly all my forges and anvils went the way of the auction a few years back...I didn't see this coming.
Now I intend to replace them , if I have the time or energy.
Blacksmiths still exist and can perform wonders with hot steel.
Can you recommend any books that would be helpful to someone with 0 knowledge of blacksmithing? A resource to start learning the basics.
I figure there will be a tremendous amount of scrap metal available as the economy slows and someone with the proper tools and knowledge of blacksmithing help themselves. Plus it sounds enjoyable.
Regards
A couple of others I have are Farm Blacksmithing by J.M. Drew. The book was first published in 1901. The other is Forging by John Jernberg first published in 1918. These are reprints by Algrove Publishing.
Another useful book is A Museum of Early American Tools by Eric Sloane, 1964.
They have a website and plenty of information as well as
pointers to much more.
I have accumulated many good books on the subject but they are currently archived in my barn/shed/workshop and not easily available.
Good coal is probably harder to find now but I used to get mine in Greensboro,NC as well as in Louisville, Ky.
Again web resources as well as forums have plenty of answers.
The point is that you need to start finding the physical resources as soon as you can. A good handcranked blower on a good wide forge along with a couple of good anvils.
The best anvils I had were Hay Budden and (forgot the other). There are some very cheap worthless anvils about and you need to shun those. My 300 pounder anvil could ring so loud and clear as to make your ears hurt. That was just with a slight tap on the anvil and of course you NEVER NEVER stike an anvil with force without something between the anvil and your hammer.
The blacksmith is one who has the ability to 'make his own tools' and bootstrap upwards by such means. No smell that I loved more than that of good coal forming coke and watching the metal go thru its heat changes.
There is a store in Wisconsin that sells firepots , and other tools as well as anvils. They likely do mail order as well.
Then if you are serious about this skill/craft the best thing to do is find someone local who can teach you or you can watch and learn the skills in the best way..rather than books.
I learned far more watching and working with my peers at the forge than I could ever have gotten from books.
You will find a large population of blacksmiths and farriers hidden in the niches and crack in this country. Men who can do wonders with hot metal and pride themselves on their skills. A craft that almost disappeared.
Good luck.
I won't unless you take the test and report your score.
The Cannibal
You scored 56 Strength, 71 Guile, 40 Morality, and 85 Survival Rate!
Well here you are. Alive and kickin'. Wait.. was that you kickin' or did that come from your stomache? Nevermind. What's important is that you made it... right? All those other survivors are just cattle. Congratulations and welcome to the REAL top of the food chain.
The "Doctor"
You scored 38 Strength, 57 Guile, 57 Morality, and 58 Survival Rate!
You're intelligent and you care about the well-being of your fellow man. Maybe to a fault. You're just bearly keeping yourself together. Regardless, everyone is glad to have you around. Just make sure you look out for number one once in a while.
"Cult Leader"
Strength: 54
Guile: 80
Morality: 57
Survival Rate: 81
And how about you, Kevembuangga?
It was Cannibal, survival rate 75.
Haha. Oh, please, somebody bring me a cookie. Please,I can't breath. OH! That was a good one, my friend.
Absolute chaos/marauding/starvation would linger 1-2 years, nothing to sustain it much longer than that. Switching from heads up!, marauders, danger, to community building could take much longer. Survive past the first few years, then chance plays a huge role who might remain, who we meet.
Less time than that. I go back to my earlier post. Where are you getting your water. If the fall happens into a Chaos. Lack of Water will kill all but the most hardy of the Land Pirates. Then food spoilage and animal bites and poor health care. The Land Pirates will be begging for hand outs sooner than you think. Our Tin cans do spoil and they spoil faster without power on in a house than they do in a fairly stable warehouse.
If it gets that bad, the Land Pirate will Have to organize and do it fast or die off like the rest just for differant reasons.
Don't forget Just In Time Food Transit Systems Have loaded the store shelf against getting food for your group of Land Pirates.
That all depends on your difination of a "Good Life"
As for the Neolithic, we turned to industrial agriculture because our soil could no longer support agriculture. Agriculture kills soil; for 10,000 years, agriculture has been in a race to outpace its own consequences. See Richard Manning's Against the Grain for a full history. Today, 85% of the minerals that were in North America's soil in 1900 are gone. We don't grow our crops in soil so much as we grow our crops in fertilizer. Take away the fertilizer, and the Great Plains are already a desert. So it's not going to be the Neolithic; we don't have the soil for the Neolithic anymore. Sure, in the long term, soil heals, but now we're talking about the same time scale in whcih global climate change ends our artificially-extended Holocene interglacial, and the climatological window that allows for agriculture slams shut.
Industrial agriculture destroys soil. But properly done, which granted has been the exception rather than the rule, agriculute builds rather than destroys the soil.
I say that as an organic gardener who very much loves the soil and knows that its the basis of all life.
Take a look at Manning's book, or even just "The Oil We Eat." Industrial agriculture destroys soil faster, but agriculture was laying waste to whole bioregions millennia before the Industrial Revolution.
Since you obviously think farming = bad and humans should return to a hunter gatherer lifestyle, there's no way I can convince you, but I will say it once more: farming when done right, does NOT destroy the land, the soil, the ecosystems, or anything else.
If you're engaging in cultivation and not tearing up fields in this manner, planting rows and fields of a single crop, then what you're doing is probably properly called horticulture. The intuitive distinction between "farming" and "gardening" generally holds here. Permaculture DOES help heal the soil, and creates a very verdant ecosystem. Mann makes a good case in 1491 that most of pre-Columbian North America was essentially a permacultural garden, and the accounts of "wilderness" we have from centuries later are essentially nothing more than a continent-wide, untended garden that had become overgrown.
But that's a different thing from organic agriculture—essentially, the same way we did agriculture before the Green Revolution. It was organic agriculture that turned the Fertile Crescent into a cruel joke and the Great Plains into the dust bowl. Ruddiman's "Early Anthropocene" hypothesis suggests that it's organic agriculture that may have led to global warming and an artifical extension of the current interglacial. It's an undeniable historical fact that organic agriculture has, over the past 10,000 years, created a global ecological catastrophe, long before the Industrial Revolution. This has nothing to do with my opinions or beliefs; this is plain fact.
There are many different ways in which agriculture destroys the soil. Monocropping leads to depletion of minerals. Irrigation leads to salination. There's erosion to consider, and so forth.
But at its base, agriculture is about wounding an ecology, and then regularly picking the scab to make sure it never heals. This is not a sustainable way to live, any way you cut it.
There might be sustainable cultivation techniques, but those do not fall under the heading of "farming" nearly so much as "gardening." There's a great deal of diversity in that, mind you. I've been fascinated recently by David Jacke's edible forest gardens (thanks to Hemenway for that tip). But if we want to come up with a sustainable form of cultivation, we need to give up on the idea of "farming" right off the bat. Anything that can be legitimately called "farming" is an incredibly destructive, unsustainable form of subsistence. When we're looking at sustainable systems, we're immediately entering the realm of permaculture, horticulture, and the gardener. There's simply no sustainable way to claim vast tracts of land for solely human use.
I come from an anthropology background, and in that field, the difference between horticulture and agriculture is not semantic at all: agricultural and horticultural socieites look utterly nothing like each other, but often share many things in common amongst themselves. The difference between horticulture and agriculture is ALL the difference.
I am constantly amazed by the range of ways that people understand language and the world. I am even more amazed that someone with an "anthropology background" could make these kinds of statements.
I have no problem with someone working to develop a distinction between farming=agriculture and gardening=horticulture. But it sounds to me that you, Jason, are claiming that these words inhererently and intuitively have the meanings that you want to assign to them. Would this even be true for non-native speakers of English? Does every language in the world have a corresponding pair of words with precisely the difference in meaning that you are claiming? When you start talking about the meanings of the words and then claim it has nothing to do with semantics, I just have to discount everything you say, because it sounds like you don't know the meanings of the words you use!
I think it is really important that we develop deeper understandings of the ways we relate to the soil and air and water, the ways in which these are sustainable, etc. I would like to suggest that claims that "We all recognize, intuitively," any kind of difference at all - such claims are not helpful in developing new understandings. Such claims tend merely to amplify divisiveness, to attempt to concretize differences that could, if left fluid, enhance deeper understandings all around - not just of the soil and air and water, but of each other and our own living dynamics.
I'm not talking about the meanings of words, I'm talking about two sets of techniques, one called "agriculture" or coloquially, "farming," and another called "horticulture," or coloquially, "gardening." I'm not talking about the words or what they mean, I'm talking about the practices they describe. You could call them "Tweedledee" and "Tweedledum," and they would still be very different things. They look different, they act different, they have very different consequences and principles and foundations. They are very different practices. We all intuitively recognize that, because they ARE so different, so we come up with different words to describe them, because they're very, very different things. This is not a merely semantic argument about defining words, this is about two very different approaches to cultivation.
Agriculture is horticulture on steroids. Agriculture uses irrigation, draft animals, tractors. Agriculture is usually associated with grains or other crops that can be stored for a long time - allowing wealth accumulation, by individuals or governments.
Jared Diamond calls agriculture The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race, but praises the horicultural practices of the sustainable societies described in Collapse.
NOUN:
The science, art, and business of cultivating soil, producing crops, and raising livestock; farming.
It doesn't appear to me that either of you are using that definition, so you are redefining the word. I don't see anything in the definition that requires agriculture to use irrigation, draft animals, or tractors, or that the crops produced have to be capable of long-term storage. And Diamond is talking about foraging, not horticulture. You won't find the word "horticulture" in "The Worst Mistake...". The only instance of "garden" is in reference to agriculture.
Contrast with horticulture
NOUN:
1. The science or art of cultivating fruits, vegetables, flowers, or ornamental plants.
2. The cultivation of a garden.
The second meaning is funny, because a garden is defined the same way as a farm is, an area of land in which one grows things, except that one doesn't grow animals in a garden (except for the bugs and bunnies in mine), and one often does grow animals on a farm.
I read these as 1) horticulture doesn't necessarily involve altering the soil, though the definition doesn't preclude that; 2) agriculture does involve altering the soil, though there's nothing in the definition that requires unsustainability or even breaking the soil surface; and 3) agriculture includes raising livestock but horticulture does not.
That's the definitive definition? I've rarely found useful definitions in dictionaries. For instance, when I use the University of Alabama's anthropological glossary, I get the following definitions:
I think the existence of words is sufficient to denote that there is some general understanding of terms referring to different things, but the popular understanding of what those differences are, is rarely precise. For definitions, dictionaries are rarely useful as anything but a starting point. I'd recommend researching this a little more deeply: you'll find that I'm not redefining the term at all, but using a long-standing, but precise, definition.
Leanan said that Diamond refers to horticulturalists in Collapse—which he does. I'm not sure if he uses that term, but the societies he talks about are classified as horticulturalists by anthropologists.
Yet expected; dictionaries simply do not provide precise definitions. They try to capture the popular understanding of the term, which is usually at least a little bit confused and contradictory. This does not mean the phenomenon does not exist, only that most people have not pondered it at such length as to really come up with a precise delineation of its defining characteristics. In other words: it's a dictionary, not a peer-reviewed scholarly paper—you get what you pay for, so to speak. We're talking about much more precise definitions here; to accuse me of "redefining" the word, this argument has essentially become a case of scholarly journals vs. encyclopedias. A dictionary definition is a starting point for a deeper inquiry, just like an encyclopedia article.
There are no less than six partially contradictory definitions for agriculture there. I'll stick with the dictionary, thanks.
By comparison, scholars have raging feuds in the pages of peer-reviewed journals constantly. Breaking into a conference and dismissing them because you don't want to wade through it, saying, "I'll stick with my encyclopedia article, thanks," is a sure sign that you're in an argument over your head.
Are you sure you're not in over your head on this one?
If dictionaries provide "common" definitions which are imprecise, then how can you expect the usage of your words from a more refined and precise refence point to be intuitive to people who are not also at that same reference point i.e. are not anthropologists?
Sorry but semantics is at the very heart of this exchange, and the shortcoming I think came from your side by assuming your audience was as knowledgable in anthropology and its precision as you.
Ultimately, don't all of our definitions come down to that?
We all know there's two different things here. We know a backyard garden is not a farm, and we know Monsanto doesn't do gardening. But beyond that "I know it when I see it," where is the line? The difference is intuitive; the distinction is not.
I don't assume an anthropological background; that's why I began by specifically iterating the precise distinctions between agriculture and horticulture used by anthropologists, because while the difference is intuitive, the distinction is not. That's when I was accused of "redefining" agriculture, at which point I was under pressure to prove that anthropologists had indeed spent a good deal of time on this definition. At which point I was told it was too confusing, and we should stick with the dictionary.
The problem is, the conversation becomes very unwieldy when everything is "agriculture." Anthropologists defined these terms because it makes it much easier to discuss these kinds of distinctions, the social ramifications, and so forth. It's useful here for all the same reasons it's useful to anthropologists, because the problems we're discussing here are the same problems they've been discussing for quite some time. As with all language, the goal should be communication: to communicate an idea as clearly, precisely, and concisely as possible. Obviously, I have failed in that here, but I hope something more solid than "sustainable agriculture" can be developed, as "sustainable" is, itself, a much abused word.
The common problem when doing this is that the definition that some types of data are created with in the other product is not always an accurate fit in our product.
Very similar in some respects to language "mapping", data mapping can be a royal pain in the backside. Because of this I try to be very sensitive when working with our customers when gathering definitions from them, and explaining our definitions back. It causes for some longer exchanges initially, but the precision of the conversion of the data ends up much higher.
I have to admit I got caught up on the thread debating the sustainability and ecological effects of agriculture versus horticulture, but I must confess that the earlier portion of the debate made little sense(or more accurately distinction) until I finally saw your later more precise definitions. Perhaps prefacing future arguments by explaining your reference point would avoid this problem in the future? I know thats generally what I have to do when I'm explaining the definition mapping of data with customers, and in the long run it usually avoids a lot of confusion, frustration, and ultimately wasted time.
Anyhow, I hope to hear more about both sides of this debate, preferrably with both sides taking a bit of effort to both more fully explain their definitions, and be more willing to accept or adapt to a meaning not traditionally used.
I am really interested in this kind of work. Have you ever looked at William Kent's Data and Reality or Brian Cantwell Smith's On the Origin of Objects? If you have any other good resources on this puzzle, I would love to expand my horizons!
I am really fascinated by the limitations of logic and language. How can we improve our ability to juggle multiple systems of terminology, &c.? Just like a sustainable way of working with ecosystems seems to require a less aggressive approach that is open to variety and change and interdependence, similarly I think that a sustainable way of working with ideas requires something other than the equivalent of monoculture. The challenges of reconciling multiple databases, that is work that I think brings these issues into crisp focus.
A very interesting reference, though I didn't read it (yet) I would like to, but consider the KIND OF ARGUMENTS which goes on here at TOD!
Pretty hopeless to bring this into the dispute.
Did you ever looked at the sillyness which surrounds the Semantic Web in spite of the supposedly high-tech savvyness of these folks.
To the morons of all breeds and creeds in ANY field an enforced monoculture solves it all.
This is just Orwellian but alas it "works" by choking alternative views until reality hits back.
The dictionary definitions you posted are the ones my dad, an agronomist, uses. He doesn't have much respect for those pansy-@$$ horticulture types. ;-)
Diamond was talking about foraging in that article, but in his book, Collapse, the sustainable societies he holds up as examples are mostly horticultural.
If that's our reference then horticulture can't use clippers or anything else more advanced than a digging stick, and agriculture can't use hand tools like a shovel and must use non-human power. That still doesn't mean that horticulture has to be sustainable or that agriculture can't be sustainable by those definitions.
I would say that the societies Diamond points out in Collapse practiced sustainable agriculture or foraging. The Japanese practiced sustainable agriculture. If I remember right, New Guinea was an example of mixed sustainable agriculture and foraging. It seems like Tikopia was the foraging and population control example, and I don't recall if they cultivated anything.
The others, I would say practiced horticulture. I believe Diamond actually used the word "sylvaculture" for one society. Because, among other things, they cultivated trees for firewood.
Growing large amounts of grain is a pretty good "test" of agriculture vs. horticulture, IMO. (From an anthropology POV, I mean. My dad would disagree.) Growing a crop that can be stored is really what sets a society onto the treadmill. If you're growing "horticulture" crops, like sweet potatoes, it really doesn't do you any good to work twice as long and grow twice as many. You can't store them; they rot. This is the basic difference between horticultural and agricultural societies.
The status of women is much higher in horticultural than in agricultural societies, and indeed, many horticultural societies are matrilineal and matrilocal (though not matriarchal).
Horticultural societies show us that separate can still be equal, so long as it's not simply a euphemism for racists.
The missionaries were horrified at how "lazy" Hawaiian women were.
However, there were many foods that only men were allowed to eat, so that might be why they had to do all the work. The women were reportedly very happy to break the food taboos, as long as they weren't caught.
In short it was a very brutal society! Now, Hawaiian society at the time of Cook was a feudal society, hence the similarities to feudal disregard for non-Noble life in our own past. But, scientists think there may have been 3 migrations to Hawaii, the original people, small, dark, and how the stuff of legends at the "Menehune" which are in legends the helpers of the common man, builders of the most beautiful stone walls, magical hard workers. etc. Legend has it they'd only come out at night, and help people who were oppressed, were capable of prodigious amounts of work, and were kind and wise. The next migration were the "run of the mill" Hawaiians, they think from the Marquesas islands. The last migration was from Tahiti, and is where the taller, lighter-skinned, Alii (nobles) came from.
The original ancient people "Menehune" and possibly the Marquesas people probably had a much more egalitarian, sustainable society. The folks from Tahiti were like all feudal overlords utter bastards of course. Imagine the Parker Family with shark-tooth lined clubs lol.
I'm familiar with the island of Oahu and there are large land areas even there, by far the most populated island, where there are just no people. This was not the case in the past, I was never told growing up that the main highway cutting through the center of the island and going through pineapple and sugar cane fields, that whole area, was at one time lived in from edge to edge by Hawaiians, farming and living their lives. Out in the middle-of-nowhere forest, one often comes across "old Hawaiian walls" made of black volcanic rock.
There were really 4 migrations to Hawaii, the last and most damaging was by Modern Industrial Man and they came from England, Portugal, US, Japan, Philippines, Tonga, Samoa, Mexico, Middle-East, etc you name it. None of 'em know how to do anything related to permaculture, most don't even have any foraging skills. But they know how to open a can with a can opener and they have the modern hierarchal social/oppression system down pat.
I grow a lot of them and they store extremely well and in fact
store longer and better than regular(what we call Irish Potatoes). Better than Pontiac Red, Kennebeck White and far better than Yukon Gold.
In fact just today I harvested (took a sample) of some sweet potatoes out of my fairly large bed.
I also have some white potatoes in the basement rotting already.
One must store the sweet potatoes preferably in the attic to cure and develop more sugar.
No you but most debating these issues seem IMO to know very little about farming.
To do sustainable farming you had damn well be a very very good gardener or you just aint gonna make it. Crops? Some hay for animal forage in the winter. Corn , just enough for feed when working the draft animals.
My kin were grade A farmers and did it just as above. They didn't give a hoot about all the rest. They had to LIVE off that farm and trade eggs,fryers ,butter and cream for the flour , sugar and other essentials. Barter is was called. No money involved.
Argue all you wish but that was not the way it was.
Today a person who does big AG? He is termed an 'operator' but not in town..just by the FSA operatives and the USDA and Ag Extension Agents.
He rents or shares land. He runs big equipment. He could care less about sustainablitity and not much about Peak Oil.
He wants what the big ass Corpo Execs got. Lots of money. He is 'running in place' just like the rest of us who were in the rat race. He isn't making it though. He will cut down trees, rape the land, do whatever he needs to.
He will only do conservation if PAID to do it.
Get real here folks.
Yup.
Keep in mind that many horticultural societies are in tropical areas. No cold cellars.
And even in areas that aren't as hot and humid, there's a limit to how long you can store tubers. Remember the Bible story, about the seven fat cows and seven lean cows? It was a warning to store food grown during seven years of plenty for use during seven years of famine. Would be pretty tough to store sweet potatoes for seven years.
I have never seen any rot like regular potatoes do but I suppose it might happen if conditions were humid like in a cellar.
Its normal also for regular potatoes to shrink (if they don't rot) and put forth shoots. Again can be planted early for next years crop. The ones that I see rotting usually have defects associated with them. On the farm way back we used to spread lime over them and that seemed to preserve them quite well as well as keeping the varmits at bay.
I don't live in a tropical area. I live in Kentucky.
We eat a lot of sweet potatoes. You definitely need to 'cure' them. A very warm area, like an attic, is best.
"When more Europeans followed up the pilots' discoveries overland, they found that the inhabitants were farmers who grew taro, bananas, yams, sugarcane, sweet potatoes, pigs, and chickens. We now know that the first four of those major crops (plus other minor ones) were domesticated in New Guinea itself, that the New Guinea highlands were one of only nine independent centers of plant domestication in the world, and that agriculture has been going on there for about 7,000 years - one of the world's longest-running experiments in sustainable food production."
Beginning of the last paragraph on page 281:
"Sustainable agriculture in the New Guinea highlands poses difficult problems not only of soil fertility but also of wood supplies..."
Note that the New Guineans use only hand tools. As Leanan points out, on page 282 he discusses the growing of casuarina as silviculture. I plant enough trees that that doesn't surprise me a bit. Silviculture is the usual term for tree farming. I haven't seen any reference to horticulture in this section yet.
I don't think anyone can accuse Diamond of not knowing that some anthropologists use the terms agriculture and horticulture differently than he is here. I doubt that it's because he's "in over his head", as Jason asked if I was. Diamond wrote this book for a non-anthropologist audience, and that audience uses the standard definitions. If he were writing for an audience of anthropologists, I would expect that he would first define his terms and then use them, just as the glossaries Leanan and Jason cited did.
The problem is that if you are trying to convince the public that industrial agriculture can't continue when oil supplies decrease, then a natural response is to call for sustainable agriculture. If you then say, as Jason did, that this is an oxymoron and agriculture cannot be made sustainable, then your audience will decide that you are simply a doomer and either agree to be a doomer with you or go look for someone who thinks it can be made sustainable. They will most likely find one of the 20,000+ hits on sustainable agriculture on Google, figure out how to make agriculture sustainable, and ignore you from then on. This is unnecessary, if you are willing to use the commonly accepted definitions.
Moot!
Sustainable agriculture cannot sustain 6.5 billions+ people, even less so with climate change.
Solve climate 'whatever it costs'
Html version:
http://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/010122king/ffcc.html
Project Gutenberg version:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5350
As for the scab analogy, of course you can keep picking it forever, as long as the underlying body has enough vitality to form a new one. And with the old Chinese system, which included recycling all human and animal waste, regularly dumping dredged canal mud onto the fields, and a hundred other bits of ingenuity, this appears to have been the case.
But it was not easy.
Two sites that deal with sustainable agriculture are:
http://www.sare.org
This is the site of the Sustainable Research and Education Project. They used to offer a free download of their book, The New American Farmer - Profiles of Agricultural Innovation. I don't know it this is still available but it is an excellent introduction into what some farmers are doing. I bought a printed version in 2001.
The other site is:
http://www.sarep.ucdavis.edu
This is the University of California at Davis' site on sustainable ag.
There are also many state organizations with web sites.
I think it's important to recognize that life isn't perfect. Unfortunately, this is the way it is.
Dude, if you seriously believe we should all be hunter gatherers again, I challenge you to be the first to go for it. Watching should be fun.
No, that's my conclusion, not my premise. I've provided an argument for it, so it's not a premise.
Well, I do believe that, and I am already underway, but here all I'm saying is that we'll have to be. We're not really getting a choice in this matter. Hunting and gathering is what humans did ofr most of our existence, and it's what we're going back to. This brief experiment with complexity is a passing blip.
If this is the core of your argument:
then really it is a simple matter of definition. It sounds as though you have defined agriculture to be those ways of working with the earth that wound the ecology, whereas horticulture is the set of ways that heal the ecology, or at least don't harm it.
It's a reasonable way to want to use words, but so far hasn't helped me decide whether or where to plant my tomatoes!