2012: Will it be the end of the world as we know it?

[clv101]

We are still ruled by 'economists' and resource depletion simply isn't in the lexicon.

[biffvernon]

Maybe because resource depletion might be the thing that saves the species from itself?

[kenneal - lagger]

One can only hope, Biff! Restraint just isn't in our politician's lexicon.

[ceti331]

Maybe because resource depletion might be the thing that saves the species from itself?

hehe.
"the species" survived reduction to 10,000 .
the article is talking about threats to the species, not to the majority of individuals.
i think "the species" will survive resource depletion and environmental collapse just fine... just not the vast majority of individuals.

but I'd agree its silly to miss resource depletion as a serious threat on that list.

[biffvernon]

i think "the species" will survive resource depletion and environmental collapse just fine... just not the vast majority of individuals.

Maybe. But we should recognise that with a bit of positive feedback global warming could wipe out the whole species, perhaps even all species.

[UndercoverElephant]

i think "the species" will survive resource depletion and environmental collapse just fine... just not the vast majority of individuals.

Maybe. But we should recognise that with a bit of positive feedback global warming could wipe out the whole species, perhaps even all species.

I can't see global warming wiping out colonies of creatures living around mid-oceanic volcanic vents very easily, but most other things could be in trouble.

[biffvernon]

On Venus the oceans just boiled away.

(I didn't say anything about very easily - just positive feedback.)

[JavaScriptDonkey]

There were no oceans of water on Venus.

Venus has almost no magnetosphere and that should be all you need to know about Venus. It doesn't so much have an atmosphere as a not quite so dense surface dressing.

[woodburner]

It's also a few miles nearer to the sun.

[Halfbreed]

Maybe because resource depletion might be the thing that saves the species from itself?

Resource depletion as savior? So when humankind pulled the first black rock out of the cliffside in England and discovered that it would do neat things if you burned it a few hundred years ago, the end result from those beginnings of depletion is...salvation?

[kenneal - lagger]

What's better? Cooking the earth so much that in a few decades nothing can live on its surface or the human race, or the American people, having to accept that its standard of living will drastically reduce to survive?

Even if we can get a technology like Carbon Capture and Storage going it will result in such a large reduction in net available energy that the availability of energy and hence its cost will rocket. This will guarantee worldwide recession and lower living standards. Even if we can get over mineral resource depletion by using the exceptionally poor ores that are left or the ores from inaccessible places or mining rubbish dumps again the energy cost of this will cause price rises and recession.

Our economies are geared to the production of cheap throwaway stuff in vast quantities so the costs of going over to the batch production of long lasting, repairable goods will be prohibitive, especially with the high energy costs that will prevail. We're stuffed and even your expensive shale gas and oil won't get us the 85,000,000 bbl/day and rising of cheap oil we need to get us out of the mire, Halfbreed. With CCS we will need half as much again or the coal equivalent.

[SleeperService]

The 'nuclear winter' will probably be extremely severe for a few weeks then turn into a perpetual winter for three or four years.!

Then turn into a global ice age for a few thousand years???

Sorry for the delay been away a few days. The jury is out on whether a 'nuclear winter' would trigger an ice age or not. Partly because climate science isn't robust enough yet to cope with this extreme and what work has been done has tended to be 'coloured' by the funders of said work.

@JSD your Venus statements are correct but slightly misleading. 'Venus has never had surface oceans' is unknowable as the oldest part of the surface appears to be about 600 million years old. It is possible that such oceans did exist for a period between the planet cooling after formation and the runaway greenhouse effect raising the temperature again. Although closer to the sun it must be remembered that the sun was cooler back then so surface oceans are possible. Similarly there could have been a magnetosphere at the same time.

When things went 'bad' on Venus it was much more earth-like than people realise.

[biffvernon]

And closerness to the Sun makes less difference than most people realise.

[Halfbreed]

What's better? Cooking the earth so much that in a few decades nothing can live on its surface or the human race, or the American people, having to accept that its standard of living will drastically reduce to survive?

Rarely in the spectrum of global consequences of human and natures interaction can you pick out two of them in advance with any level of certainty.

Our economies are geared to the production of cheap throwaway stuff in vast quantities so the costs of going over to the batch production of long lasting, repairable goods will be prohibitive, especially with the high energy costs that will prevail. We're stuffed and even your expensive shale gas and oil won't get us the 85,000,000 bbl/day and rising of cheap oil we need to get us out of the mire, Halfbreed. With CCS we will need half as much again or the coal equivalent.

Fortunately we have this great big nuclear furnance nearby, so collecting almost any reasonable of energy isn't the problem. Although I must admit, my standard of iving does depend on the current popularity of shale oil and shale gas. It also strikes me as obvious that it can't last any longer than the easy oil and gas did. So we need to prep our great great grandchildren for their future using better energy supplies than we ever did I suppose.

[kenneal - lagger]

Ah! The complacency of an ostrich with its head in the sand!!

Rarely in the spectrum of global consequences of human and natures interaction can you pick out two of them in advance with any level of certainty.

The consequences involved in using the available fossil fuels is such that, even if the certainty is low, the fact of using them should not be an option. See video

Fortunately we have this great big nuclear furnance nearby, so collecting almost any reasonable of energy isn't the problem. Although I must admit, my standard of iving does depend on the current popularity of shale oil and shale gas. It also strikes me as obvious that it can't last any longer than the easy oil and gas did. So we need to prep our great great grandchildren for their future using better energy supplies than we ever did I suppose.

You again fail to recognise the concept of net energy. Net energy is the amount of usable energy left over from a source once the energy and resource cost of extracting that energy are taken away. The net energy for oil has, historically, been over a hundred barrels. It has only taken one barrel of oil to get 100 barrels of the stuff from the bottom of the well to the consumer. That has now reduced to twenty to twenty five and in the case of tar sands oil can be as little as 5.2 (Charles Hall, http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3839) and corn ethanol is as low s 1.3. Hall posits that society requires a net energy of about 5 to continue functioning. The lower the net energy in a fuel the higher its cost and the more of that fuel required for society to function. So with the production of shale oil and gas we need to produce more of it than conventional oil for society to continue as is.

The costs of solar collection are comparatively high compared to oil and the costs of using it as a replacement for oil are extremely high. It involves a complete change of technology and equipment and the distribution system would need extensive improvements to take the extra current required for charging cars. Hirsch in his report stated that it would take the US 30 years to fully transition from oil. With the world in recession and money tight in the west we have a problem without the huge dead weight of the American Auto industry campaigning for the status quo.

Hall on Nuclear (from http://resourceinsights.blogspot.co.uk/ ... cliff.html)

But what about nuclear? Hall and his students once again attempted to calculate the EROI. Others have made claims of 1.86 to 1 to 93 to 1. The very high estimates appear to leave out many steps in the nuclear fuel and construction cycle. Some contend that the EROI of nuclear is favorable enough--perhaps 11 to 1--to argue for expansion of nuclear power. But, if one takes into account all the energy that will be expended over time storing nuclear waste and guarding the waste and the mothballed nuclear plants in the future, the EROI could drop below 1. Essentially, we get the benefit now, and future generations get both the security and energy expenditures.

So! Not a lot of mileage there then. If we were actually doing something to transition as Hirsch has suggested we might not have a problem. After all, when the world faced the problems of Y2K and the Hole in the Ozone Layer, what were said to be huge problems turned out to be relatively small ones. But only because quick action was taken to alleviate them. In the case of Global Warming and Peak Oil we are doing nothing. Hence problems in the future.