| QUOTE | | Global Warming, Is it the end of the world? |
Yes; it is the “end of the world”, but global warming isn’t our most immediate concern. Our entire civilization is based upon and completely dependent upon the unfettered and unlimited consumption of a finite, non-renewable natural resource; fossil fuels. Petrochemicals are the sine qua non of the Industrial Age. At some point it is inevitable that global demand will outstrip supply; demand will continue to rise while production precipitously declines. The best estimates of when this will actually occur are somewhere between now and 2010. The discovery of new oil reserves peaked in the 1962 and has declined to virtually nothing in the past few years. Every year we consume 6 barrels of oil for every single barrel we find. The global supply of oil will peak, and then steadily decline, but global demand will not. By some estimates, there will be an average of two-percent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead. In 2003 we burned 76 million barrels; by 2020 we will be using 112 million barrels a day, after which projected demand accelerates (provided of course that there is any oil to fuel the accelerated demand; some models show global oil production to be essentially zero by 2030; Chevron predicts that the world will consume approximately one trillion barrels of oil over the next 30 years - about as much untapped petroleum as is thought to lie in all of the world's known oil reserves.). Current world demand for oil is about 84 million barrels per day, and current world production capacity is about....well, 84 million barrels per day. We’re maxed out; there is essentially no reserve production capacity in the system. Even a small drop in production can be economically devastating. For instance, during the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, shortfalls in production as small as 5% caused the price of oil to nearly quadruple. The same thing happened in California a few years ago with natural gas: a production drop of less than 5% caused prices to skyrocket by 400%. Once the decline gets under way, production will drop by between 3% and 8% per year, every year. An 8% yearly decline would cut global oil production by a whopping 50% in less than nine years. If a 5% cut in production caused prices to triple in the 1970s, what do you think a 50% cut is going to do, socially, economically, and politically?
The "End of the World" will begin with increasingly drastic fluctuations in the price of oil as demand meets and starts to exceed production capacity. Industrialized countries will go to war to secure their access to oil, but production will start to fall off, either due to disruptions in the supply stream due to war, and/or the decreasing productivity of the oil fields exacerbated by rising demand. This will not follow a bell-shaped curve; all of the "easy" oil, readily accessible and relatively close to the surface, is long gone; extracting the remainder will rapidly reach a point of diminishing returns that will require more energy than it will produce. This will result in a "crash and burn" global economic depression that will make October 28th 1929 look like a minor market correction. Industries will shut down, there will be increasingly frequent blackouts and shortages of heating oil and food as an ever-increasing share of increasingly scarce resources are diverted to the war machine, desperately trying to squeeze out just one more quarter's profits for the military industrial complex. The newly impoverished populace; hungry, cold, permanently unemployed and completely lacking the survival skills necessitated by this new reality, will start to rebel, but will be repressed by the increasingly draconian "emergency measures" of an increasingly Fascist government. As people become more desperate, the social fabric will fray, and then quickly unravel as a society awash with firearms that prides itself on "rugged individualism" (actually a synonym for selfishness, self-centeredness, and narcissistic egocentrism) and have always assumed that their privileged position (just 6% of the world's population but consuming more than 25% of it's resources) is the manifest will of God become increasingly pissed off that the teat's gone dry, abandon any pretense of polite society and start preying upon one another. The chaos and violence escalates as Government's span of control contracts and finally disappears altogether as the lights finally go out for the last time.
Now the real problems begin.
Between 1950 and 1984 world grain production increased by 250%, essentially due to fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon fueled irrigation. In the United States in 1994, 400 gallons of oil equivalents are expended annually to feed each American. Agricultural energy consumption is broken down as follows:
· 31% for the manufacture of inorganic fertilizer
· 19% for the operation of field machinery
· 16% for transportation
· 13% for irrigation
· 08% for raising livestock (not including livestock feed)
· 05% for crop drying
· 05% for pesticide production
· 08% miscellaneous
Energy costs for packaging, refrigeration, transportation to retail outlets, and household cooking are not factored into these figures. In the US, the average piece of food is transported almost 1,500 miles before it gets to your plate. In Canada, the average piece of food is transported 5,000 miles from where it is produced to where it is consumed. Just think what crop yields will be like without irrigation, fertilizer, pesticides, gasoline for the tractors, or diesel fuel for the trucks to bring it to market (or for that matter the industrial manufacturing base necessary to create everything from gigantic combine harvesters to garden hoes). Like every other aspect of modern civilization, agriculture is completely dependent upon petrochemicals, and there are no viable alternatives available, either now or on some futurists drafting board.
There are 6.5 billion people on the planet now; in 1600 there were 500 million. Even in the unlikely event that accountants and software engineers can suddenly master medieval agricultural techniques, feeding even 500 million will present unique challenges. Do not underestimate the importance of technological breakthroughs like the wheeled plow versus the turning board, horse versus oxen, or the spinning wheel versus the drop spindle. These technologies were the cumulative result of the collective experience of thousands of years; the learning curve for farmers in the last half of this century is going to be brutally steep.
Some climactic models show that reductions in crop yields could be as high as 50% as global temperatures increase. Most of the American Midwest, central Europe, Africa and Asia will become deserts; the absence of glacial runoff and annual snowmelts making water much scarcer than it is now. Already 20% of the global population has no access to safe potable water. A corn crop that produces about 118 bushels per acre a year of grain requires more than 500,000 gallons an acre of water during the growing season. While areas of Canada and Russia will become more temperate, clearing and cultivating land on a large scale is a highly fuel-intensive industrial process; and at least 1.2 acres per person is required in order to maintain current American dietary standards, and that’s using modern petrochemical-based agricultural methods. Without oil, as many as 10 acres per person might be needed. Also, it's not simply a matter of moving a crop up a few degrees of latitude; it's an entirely different environment; different seasons, sunlight, soil, pests, diseases. Unfortunately, our modern genetically modified crops are optimized to grow precisely where they are now, and are entirely dependent upon massive applications of man-made fertilizers and pesticides. The "field wheat" of the Middle Ages was genetically diverse; big wheat, little wheat, tall wheat, short wheat, drought resistant wheat, mold resistant wheat, bug resistant wheat. A wet or dry year might produce a poor crop, but at least it produced a crop; modern GM crops are likely to fail entirely if the growing conditions are even slightly out of their narrow optimized range.
One of the universal commonalities of previous famines is the consumption of seed stock, followed by farm animals (including those necessary for planting and cultivation), all wildlife, and finally plants, insects, and grasses. Repeatedly throughout history this imperative for immediate short-term survival has drastically impeded long-term agricultural recovery. It’s unlikely that seed stocks and large animals like oxen and draft horses will survive the starvation of six billion people.
In pre-industrial times, people supplemented their diets with wild game and fish, a luxury we will not be able to rely upon. With a 5 degree Fahrenheit temperature increase due to global warming, as much as 30% of species are likely to go extinct. With the precipitous worldwide drop in agricultural production, we'll do our very best to eat all the rest.
In 2003, 29% of open sea fisheries were in a state of collapse. Despite bigger vessels, better nets, and new technology for spotting fish the global catch fell by 13% between 1994 and 2003. Freshwater fish stocks have declined by up to 90% in many of the world's largest rivers. The rate of population collapses has accelerated in recent years. As of 1980, just 13.5% of fished species had collapsed, even though fishing vessels were pursuing 1,736 fewer species then. Today, the fishing industry harvests 7,784 species commercially. At the current rate of decline global fishing stocks will completely and irreversibly collapse by 2048. Today, 1 billion people rely upon seafood as their only source of protein. The world's population grows at an estimated 1.14% annually; the number of humans increases by 203,800 every day, while 6 million children starve to death annually. The imperative to feed this population will result in the oceans being swept clean of virtually every edible organism from krill to blue whales within the next 50 years.
Any ecosystem can only sustainably support the population that it can feed. The Malthusian implications for the future should be obvious to anyone with even the most rudimentary math skills.
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He also refused to sign a commitment stating he'd decrease that and be an example. He never actually said "no" he wouldn't. He just dodged the question with a question. I'd say that's being hypocritical? 
) If I preach that a man should be faithful to his wife, what I do does not change the fact that this is true. I think we can all agree on that principal. However, would you not agree that the message loses it's potency if I, as the one conveying the truth, run around on my wife? No, it doesn't' change the truth, but how are my hearers going to react? They would think it is not as important an issue as I make it out to be since I don't practice what I preach.
and scientists approach this issue non-agenda driven, it's going to be difficult to determine the truth of the matter. 
