See the last paragraph of post #31.
Go thou and do likewise.
I hate to break it to you, but if the world is facing an oil crash disaster over the next 5 years, lobbying for better mass transit ain’t gonna stop it.
Who knows, maybe we can get the Second Avenue Subway running by 2015.
Do you ever feel like you’re shouting into the void?
Aquifer depletion is a significant part of increased crop prices, especially grain coming from Central and South Asia. For the first time since the Green Revolution, circa 1950, Pakistan is having to import grain, despite having the world’s most massive irrigation works built by the British to control flooding and provide irrigation for agriculture in the Sindh region. The same is true in many nations that have been traditionally net exporters of agricultural commodities, like Egypt and Mexico. And water, unlike energy, is not fungible; you can’t just switch to a different source, nor would it be practical to replace the massive global hydrological cycle which supplies aquifers and glacial source rivers with a manmande purification and distribution infrastructure. Current non-replenishable water sources are not sustainable in the long term, or indeed, even beyond much beyond the immediate time. There is also the issue of high value protein loss from depletion of lakes, rivers, and landlocked seas; the almost complete (and intentional) destruction of the Aral Sea has virtually destroyed a once prolific and valuable source of protein-intensive food production.
Europe, by the way, has been a net importer of agricultural commodities throughout the 20th Century, which was actually an incentive for the investment in irrigation and transportation infrastructure in Asia by colonial powers. I don’t know where the notion that Europe is self-sustaining comes from, but it simply isn’t true, and in fact the bulk of of total agricultural production in Western Europe comes from a few regions.
Could the Earth support several times its current population, as Svejk suggests? Not with current agricultural methods, and certainly not at the standard of living enjoyed in modern industrial nations. The claims I’ve seen that try to prove this tend to assume that any piece of flat, somewhat arable land is just as good as another for the vast range of crops; in fact, the few major breadbaskets are largely served by non-replenished shallow aquifers which are not only drained of fossil water that required thousands or tens of thousands of years for water to collect, but are also damaged by subsidence and subsequently reduced in carrying capacity, or (if located in near-coastal areas) contaminated by salt water intrustion as the net flow to oceans becomes negative. Adopting methods of intensive aquiculture might give a means of sustainable agriculture for the current population of the world or greater, but the diet that would emerge from that would resemble nothing like a conventional Western diet, and the ecological impact of intensive agriculture in relatively fragile littoral zones, and subsequent impact upon deep water fishery gives pause to the thought of moving food production into the oceans en masse.
As for “peak water”; I’d say that it has already been passed, as freshwater aquifer extraction in the United States, India, Pakistan, Mexico, et cetera has shown dramatically reduced yields and required much more efficient use just to maintain viability. We can compensate for a reduction in oil; given how much we absolutely waste, there is certainly room for gains just by increasing the simple efficiency of any number of processes, while researching and developing energy alternatives. A reduction in agricultural fresh water is ultimately more problematic; if you don’t have water when you need it, your crops die, end of story.
As for the poser by the o.p., one has to recognize that a Malthusian catastrophe is a conceptual hypothesis, not a quantifiable theory for any reasonably complex system. Like the Laffer curve, it is an idea that makes a certain amount of sense until you try to apply it directly and simply to a real world problem. Virtually every famine in the 20th Century was due not to an unavoidable crop failure or gross inability to transport food, but instead owes its genesis to political forces, be they disinterest in human suffering, stupid pseudoscience agricultural theories imposed by authoritarian governments, or deliberate attempts to starve a population into submission. And it’s not a simple matter of X amount of crops supporting Y number of people, especially given the great disparity in quality, variety, and caloric content of food in the diets of Industrial versus Third and Fourth World nations. When Jenny Craig pulls in millions helping Americans try (mostly unsuccessfully) lose weight while children in Africa and Asia starve, no simple model of food availability is going to give intelligible answers.
Stranger
Stranger, impressive post. But that’s the long-term problem. The shorter-term problem that we’re seeing now is more closely related to energy being in strong demand, which has resulted, for the first time, in a large-scale decision to substitute food-based energy for fossil-fuel based energy, at the same time as tens of millions of Asians are upgrading their diets and therefore demanding far more of our agriculture than had been the case even just a few years ago. It’s a problem born of rapidly increasing prosperity in Asia, which is where the incremental demand for both energy and food is coming from. As such, this short-term problem will be solved, but it may get worse before it gets better because some Asian governments have responded by capping the prices paid to farmers, which is a huge disincentive for them to increase their output, since they’re getting hit on the other side with large increases in the price of their basic supplies, such as oil-based fertilizers. Here in the US, subsidization of ethanol is screwing around with where our farm output goes.
Politics, in short, is getting in the way of economics solving the short-term problem. I have the sinking feeling we’re going to see more starvation among the world’s poor, including here in the US, before increased output is allowed to respond to the increased demand.
Stranger, you make some very valid points. However, you seem to have missed the GAEZ study. It is a fascinating study. It looked at (inter alia) the availability of land for rain-fed agriculture, and found that there is a lot of it. For example, Sudan has enough unused, prime, rain-fed cropland to feed all of Africa … unfortunately, they’ve been having a bit of trouble there lately (e.g. Darfur and all the rest), so nothing is being planted.
The food problem, in general, is not from lack of water for agriculture. In fact, in many places the largest waste of water is from agriculture.
The problem, as you point out, is human beings and their nasty habits of greed, rapacity, violence, and general lack of humanity … exacerbated currently by country-based policies that reward producers in the developed world with huge subsidies, as well as market-distorting policies that reward the diversion of food into fuel. Ah, well, nobody ever said we weren’t stupid along with the rest of our shortcomings …
w.
PS - Malthus was wrong then, and is wrong now. He claimed that humans increased geometrically, while food production only increased linearly, so it was inevitable that we would run out of food. In his 1798 treatise, An Essay on the Principle of Population, he said that
What he failed to realize was 1) humans don’t increase geometrically, and 2) food production is done by humans, so if the number of humans goes up fast, the number of food producers goes up fast as well, and so does food production.
As a result, he has been proven wrong by a couple of hundred years of experience, including the doubling of the worlds population from 1960 (~ 3 billion) to the present (~ 6 billion). According to Malthus, feeding them would be impossible, but in fact the 6 billion are currently fed better than the three billion were.
Yes, we are facing real problems. But Malthusian limitations are not one of them.
BTW, oil would have to be about $154 in 2008 dollars to break even at $110/bbl assuming a 5% alternate investment opportunity. Given that the current prices is inflated due to the weak dollar and liquidity crisis, and the impact on demand of a real crisis, this price doesn’t seem way out of line unless one is expecting a very fast drop in production or increase in demand.
As I understand the rules of futures trading, you don’t actually have to shell out the $110/bbl until the settlement date, assuming you can meet margin calls. And presumably, any money you deposit into a margin account will earn interest.
However, I admit that I don’t fully understand the ins and outs of derivative contracts, so please feel free to correct me.
He also failed to anticipate technological advances that could make a given acre yield more food – the Green Revolution.
However, while less labor-intensive than past times’ farming methods, this approach is more resource-intensive, particularly in its dependence on petroleum-based fertilizers and petroleum-powered equipment . . .
It seems to me that the population is indeed growing geometrically, but it’s masked to a certain extent.
To illustrate, suppose that 99.99% of the population has achieved zero or negative population growth; and .01% (members of the FLDS church?) are engaging in studied reproduction.
In that case, the future world population at time “t” is something like 6,000,000,000 + 6,000,000 * exp (t/20).
Which is an exponential function, but it will take a while to take off. Granted, most of the world’s population seems to be levelling off in terms of population growth rate. But it seems to me that certain subcultures are – as I mentioned above – engaging in studied reproduction and show no signs of levelling off.
Our current understanding of physics says that we will hit a limit eventually. Granted the theoretical limits are a long way off.
My father in law used to be a commodities broker, so I can ask him. I have a hard time believing someone is going to front you money to pay for the contract you bought off of someone without charging you interest also. My point was, for everyone reading, since no one mentioned it, that you have to be careful evaluating this kind of investment.
I think I actually agree with you. I think we have the technology to improve efficiency a lot, given the financial incentive, so a bit increase in oil prices would result in a drop in demand without a hydrogen economy or other far off dreams. California has decreased consumption over the past few years in absolute terms. It will be interesting to see that the new carbon incentives will do. For instance, I read of a place which will buy solar cells for you, and you pay back over time out of your electricity savings.
Please do.
I don’t think that a futures contract requires this. I imagine that you just put up some margin and add or subtract depending on how the investment is doing.
That’s true. And I’m not seriously advocating that anyone invest in oil futures. But I think my basic point stands.
And your basic point, as I understand it, is that “peak oil” is not a threat but simply a figment of certain people, and the fact that these people have not all run out and invested in oil futures amounts to an admission by these people that peak oil is, in fact, a fallacy. Do I have that right?
He also was pretty convinced that Y2K would end civilization as we know it.
Some choice quotes:
“Y2K is real. Y2K is going to rock our world.”
“Even before I ever heard of Y2K, I concluded that our practices and habits in placemaking the past half century have resulted in a human habitat that is ecologically catastrophic, economically insane, socially toxic, spiritually degrading, and fundamentally unsustainable.”
“For five years, I had been flying around the country telling college lecture audiences and conference-goers that our fucked up everyday environment of strip malls, tracts houses, outlet malls, parking lots and other accessories of the national automobile slum was liable to put us out of business as a civilization. I asserted that the culture growing in this foul medium had gotten so bloated and diseased that it would succumb sooner rather than later to its own idiot inertia. I still believe that today. It is both a conviction and a wish, because to go on in our current mode would be culturally suicidal.”
“Only I now see Y2K as the mechanism that will force events to a tipping point much more quickly and surely.”
“Y2K is a bitch-slap upside the head of American culture. With a two-by-four.”
“The aftermath of Y2K will require us to do things differently. We are going to have to live more locally, and more self-dependently. All our activities will have to be conducted on a finer scale. The “move to quality” that is sometimes invoked in discussions of financial investments will apply across the cultural and economic board. There will be less room in our lives for junk of all kinds: junk food, junk merchandise, junk entertainment, junk relationships. We are going to have to re-invent smaller-scaled farms (with value-adding activities), and we’re going to have to localize, or at least regionalize, commerce. We may have to start making some things again ourselves, or do without them for a while.”
Kunstler hates modern Western civilization, and latched on to Y2K as the chance to see it destroyed and replaced, for it to get its comuppance. And when that didn’t pan out, despite his predictions of doom, he turned to Peak Oil as the Thing That Will End Wasteful Western Civilization Once and For All.
Compare that last paragraph quoted above from his Y2K essay to what he’s currently saying about what will happen after Peak Oil: it’s the exact same thing.
Pretty much – I would say that the likelihood of a peak oil armageddon scenario is wildly exaggerated by some folks.
Pretty much. It suggests that they are a lot less confident than they are letting on.
brazil84, always a pleasure to cross paths on the Board. You make some interesting points:
You are correct, but the rate of increase is nowhere near what is suggested by the word “geometrical”. This suggests “1, 2, 4, 8, 16”, when as you point out, it is more on the level of a couple of percent.
In addition, “geometrical increase” implies that the rate of increase is steady. It implies that we get 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and not 1, 2, 4, 7, 11, 16. In the real world, the rate of increase has been steadily falling. In 1969, the increase was 2.1% per annum. This has since dropped to about 1.1% per annum. So while the increase is still geometrical, the falling rate means that unlike the 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 kind of geometrical, this one will reach a limit.
Again, you are correct. But since we can turn energy into food, and since the amount of energy in the world is immense, and since there are known energy sources which we are not yet able to tap (e.g. fusion), and very likely other energy sources yet undiscovered … while your statement is theoretically correct, I fear that it has no practical relevance. Not only is the limit a “long way off”, we can’t even determine how far off it is.
All the best to you,
w.
I suppose it’s a matter of semantics. I am accustomed to looking at functions in terms of “Big O” Big O of the population growth curve is exponential (i.e. geometric), as far as I can tell.
I have to mention something about this. According to Kunstler’s Wikipedia entry:
(Emphasis mine.)
Okay, I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make any sense to me. Kunstler says it was so the public wouldn’t panic, but wasn’t the public already panicked? Wasn’t the issue front and center, admitted to be a problem by many major government and financial institutions? And isn’t it still controversial how bad it would’ve been even WITHOUT all the hype? So why the secrecy?
I don’t know enough about Kunstler to say if this characterization is true or not.
I do know, however, that some people DO think that way. And it struck me a while ago just how optimistic and perfect this scenario is. Because if (specifically) apocalyptic peak oil is true, then it solves all of the world’s major problems permanently with almost no collateral damage to the natural world, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.
Think about it. The human population would be severely reduced. Technology would be set back hundreds of years with ALMOST NO WAY TO RETURN. The nation-state would cease to exist, and without mass communication and transportation, global war is impossible. And all this is done without the harm to the environment that a nuclear war or Day After Tomorrow global warming would cause!
That strikes me as awfully convenient, for lack of a better word.
So why are people starving to death on some of the most fertile regions on Earth?The projections that you are basing your opinion on are intrinsically flawed and have no credibility in reality.
No doubt the Earth could hold fifteen million if we all lived on algae within cardboard boxes and never moved more then a mile away from home.
Your viewpoint that the current FAMINES,NOT food shortages or a shortfall in agricultural production,or logistical problems with food distribution or any other mealy mouthed platitudes to describe the situation are not UNFORTUNATE they are killing millions of men women and children on a continuos basis without any apparent light at the end of the tunnel.
Burying your head in the sand will not make the problem go away.
The problem being that the world is overpopulated and is becoming increasingly more so minute by minute,hour by hour,day by day,week by week,month by month,year by year.
If we are too cowardly to face up to it we will die a long slow lingering death choked by our own filth.
Is Zimbabwe one of these regions?
It certainly was a massive exporter of agricultural goods until farm seizures, yes.