Mass extinction

[clv101]

I expect we have over a billion people alive today, using less than half a barrel of oil per year. Expressing that in renewable energy terms, it's equivalent to around 283 kWh per year or around 0.8 kWh per day.

I dont beleive it.
[1] People in the 3rd world may individually use little oil but they are still part of a system of global trade. e.g. someone may use no oil, picking coffee beans which are then traded for imported industrially produced grain.

Yeah, there'll be a bit of that, but the really poor folks aren't that well integrated into the global system.

[2] Different areas have vastly different condtions: if you live next to a freshwater stream where the climate is just right, you dont need fossil fuels to get food, water, heating, cooling. The point is fossil fuel use is what allows more people to exist elsewhere, where conditions are not ideal.

You think Ethiopia, Mali, Niger, Chad etc are easy places to live? With the population densities they are living with today? No, these folks are living with little fossil fuel use in harsh environments.

example - in europe its generally colder - so people needed firewood to stay warm. This places a limit on carrying capacity based on rate trees grow. Use fossil fuels for heating, and you can break that limit.

This is an interesting point - we know that in most of Europe you can get away with no space heating at all, if you build correctly. The current set up is rubbish - we can't use today's scenario to infer what's technically possible.

Why did we go to all the trouble of building complex objects like offshore drilling rigs, metal ships, internal combustion engines ?

I assert it was out of necessity and created the population growth.

Define necessity? Is it necessary for us to be driving thousands of miles a year in 1 tonne cars? Necessary to fly half way around the world on holiday, necessary to wrap everything in plastic... These things aren't even close to necessities.

If you want proof, of any of these theories, me and steve are going on empirical measurement, not how many people do we THINK could be supported but how many people did the planet ACTUALLY support.

Wheras to prove this idea that people COULD live without fossil fuels... well, you need to SHOW me , all 7billion giving up the fossil fuels - a "practice run".

If people dont want to do such a practice run thats a clear sign its practically impossible.

I never said it was going to happen, practically, just that it's technically possible. The empirical measurements are there already, hundreds of millions of people living with very little fossil fuel use is evidence that the rest of us could too.

[clv101]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh#Agriculture

sure enough, according to wikipedia bangladesh does infact partake in global trade.

So not only does Bangladesh consume very little energy, they also manage to manufacture and grow things for export too!

I thought the energy and CO2 emissions from third world manufacturing which we buy should be correctly allocated to us? So the good people of Bangladesh are actually living on even less fossil fuel than I suggested.

[ceti331]

You think Ethiopia, Mali, Niger, Chad etc are easy places to live? With the population densities they are living with today? No, these folks are living with little fossil fuel use in harsh environments.

I didnt' say its an easy life, just more suitable for life without fossil fuels. Thats the simplest explanation.

Walking to a stream to get freshwater and carrying it back is harder work than getting it from a tap, but not possible everywhere for everyone, since a stream can't provide water for the same number of people over the same distance as a fossil-fueled system.



If these places have populations that*really* live without fossil fuels, why did their population explosion only happen in modern times?

Define necessity? Is it necessary for us to be driving thousands of miles a year in 1 tonne cars? Necessary to fly half way around the world on holiday, necessary to wrap everything in plastic... These things aren't even close to necessities.

even if 80% is wasted it doesn't mean we can survive without the remaining 20%

It would take 5 earths to give everyone a western standard of living - clearly the potential demand for more oil is there.
I certainly dont have everything I want, eg living in pleasant surroundings.

Given we have both unfilfilled wants and needs why aren't people using renewables to add to the existing fossil fuel abundance already?

I assert that its practical difficulties that prevent it - transmission losses, energy taken to manufacture the windmills/panels etc. Also taxes and subsidies distort calculations the market is supposed to do on their thermodynamic viability.

heh one of my friends asked why we didn't use solar in the desert to fill baloons with hydrogen to transport the eenergy around the world. But how would you make hydrogen in a desert, without water I bet all these renewable plans have practical problems that you'll run into in implementation - that is usually what happens when shown something that looks dramatically better in theory.

[Little John]

You think Ethiopia, Mali, Niger, Chad etc are easy places to live? With the population densities they are living with today? No, these folks are living with little fossil fuel use in harsh environments.

I didnt' say its an easy life, just more suitable for life without fossil fuels. Thats the simplest explanation.

Walking to a stream to get freshwater and carrying it back is harder work than getting it from a tap, but not possible everywhere.


If these places have populations that live without fossil fuels, why did the population explosion only happen in modern times?

Because of access to global technologies, global communications, global transportation systems and global trade and all of these things developed on the back of easy and cheap access to plentiful, portable energy. In other words, the reason no one invented the internal combustion engined tractor before the industrial revolution is because there was no cheap and plentiful energy available to run it prior to that time. The energy comes first (or the development of a single key technology that allows access to previously untapped energy). All of the technologies, communications, transportation systems and ever more complex and specialised trading structures that can take advantage of that energy come second.

Take the energy away and none of these things will work or even make economic sense.

[biffvernon]

Yes but the per capita global trade is very small.

They are one of the biggest rice producers but little of it is traded internationally.

Whatever folks may think is possible, there will come a time when 7 billion of us will manage without much fossil fuel. The transition may be bumpy but it will happen.

[clv101]

Whatever folks may think is possible, there will come a time when 7 billion of us will manage without much fossil fuel. The transition may be bumpy but it will happen.

I think it's more likely that the top billion people will hoard declining fossil fuel, ultimately causing a die-off. I doubt we'll ever see a world with 7bn+ people and less than half the fossil fuel supply we have now.

[ceti331]

Yes but the per capita global trade is very small.

They are one of the biggest rice producers but little of it is traded internationally.

Whatever folks may think is possible, there will come a time when 7 billion of us will manage without much fossil fuel. The transition may be bumpy but it will happen.

if it wasn't fossil fuels, (whether locally or globally)
in your opinion what factor increased bangledesh's population from 28million to 148million last centuary?

[clv101]

if it wasn't fossil fuels, (whether locally or globally)
in your opinion what factor increased bangledesh's population from 28million to 148million last centuary?

Of course it was related to fossil fuels. However, we need to realise that the system isn't symmetric. Growing and shrinking populations are not symmetric processes, like growing and diminishing ice sheets aren't symmetric processes.

It x-amount of energy increase increased the population by y-amount, it doesn't not follow that an energy decrease of x-amount will decrease population by that same y-amount.

[biffvernon]

Which is what I would have said if I hadn't been beaten to it.

I think we can agree that 7 billion living without much fossil fuel is possible; the interesting question is whether we're collectively smart enough to organise things well.

I find a bit of, possibly misguided, optimism provides the incentive to try.

[ceti331]

I'd say the opposite - if anything the damage to the systems we used to rely on would mean that carrying capacity might actually be lower, which is why some use the 500m figure instead of the 2billion i usually quote.

[Little John]

I'd say the opposite - if anything the damage to the systems we used to rely on would mean that carrying capacity might actually be lower, which is why some use the 500m figure instead of the 2billion I usually quote.

Yes, we have farmed the land to death, quite literally. The so called "Green Revolution" of the 60s onwards should have more properly been called the "Amber Revolution" since it consisted primarily of turbo charged wheat and maize that could grow faster and produce more seeds. But, only in the presencee of massive amounts of hydrocarbon based fertilisation. This has allowed us to drain the land of nutrients far faster than it could ever self-replenish. Much agricultural farmland is now little more than a dead medium used to hold cereals vertically in place while they are grown via the energy of the sun and via the artificial addition of annually applied nutrients. The "Green Revolution" was, in reality, just about the worst thing to happen to life on earth since the invention of farming.

What all of this means is that in the absence of hydrocarbon-derived fertilisers and in the presence, in this country alone, of 70 odd million there is no way on earth that we get to slide gently back to some rural idyll circa 1750.

Collectively, we're screwed. It just comes down to individual solutions now.

[mr brightside]

I like Agent Smith's summing up of us...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Na9-jV_ ... detailpage

I don't think most people will be arsed to stop reproducing. In this country it pays, in some African countries it's common to have many wives and many children leading to higher levels of status. All that can save the planet now is an extinction event, but i worry that our intelligence and technology advances might lessen or worse nullify the blow.

[UndercoverElephant]

I like Agent Smith's summing up of us...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Na9-jV_ ... detailpage

I don't think most people will be arsed to stop reproducing. In this country it pays, in some African countries it's common to have many wives and many children leading to higher levels of status. All that can save the planet now is an extinction event, but i worry that our intelligence and technology advances might lessen or worse nullify the blow.

Then the next blow will just be even harder. The longer TWAWKI goes on gobbling up the Earth's resources and ecosystems, the more long-term damage will be done to the carrying capacity.

It's not unlike what is happening to the economic system - TPTB are "using their intelligence to lessen or nullify the blow" - every trick in the book and some new ones they've made up specially for the Big One. But the end result is that the bomb that is waiting to go off just keeps getting bigger. In both cases, minimising the size of the eventual, inevitable crash involves getting it over with instead of putting it off.

[Catweazle]

All that can save the planet now is an extinction event, but i worry that our intelligence and technology advances might lessen or worse nullify the blow.

The Planet will be just fine, with or without Humans as long as we don't manage to break it into pieces or shift the orbit.

Stop worrying about the planet and start worrying about your species.

[mr brightside]

I like Agent Smith's summing up of us...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Na9-jV_ ... detailpage

I don't think most people will be arsed to stop reproducing. In this country it pays, in some African countries it's common to have many wives and many children leading to higher levels of status. All that can save the planet now is an extinction event, but i worry that our intelligence and technology advances might lessen or worse nullify the blow.

Then the next blow will just be even harder. The longer TWAWKI goes on gobbling up the Earth's resources and ecosystems, the more long-term damage will be done to the carrying capacity.

It's not unlike what is happening to the economic system - TPTB are "using their intelligence to lessen or nullify the blow" - every trick in the book and some new ones they've made up specially for the Big One. But the end result is that the bomb that is waiting to go off just keeps getting bigger. In both cases, minimising the size of the eventual, inevitable crash involves getting it over with instead of putting it off.

Should both of us be right then the final hurrah would be absolutely catastrophic. Hopefully i'll have gone over the handlebars of my bike and broken my neck by that time!