Clearly I’m in an “oh god oh god we’re all going to die” mood. This is the final of the three articles on this subject that I’m posting, and then it’s back to our regular programming.
It appears we’re at peak everything now. Or near enough. What are we doing to fight this? If the solutions are going to take 10-15 years to implement, shouldn’t we be thinking of them at least? And in many cases, like the sudden run on elements, well, is there anything we can do?
But now comes word that it isn’t just wildlife that can go extinct. The element gallium is in very short supply and the world may well run out of it in just a few years. Indium is threatened too, says Armin Reller, a materials chemist at Germany’s University of Augsburg. He estimates that our planet’s stock of indium will last no more than another decade. All the hafnium will be gone by 2017 also, and another twenty years will see the extinction of zinc. Even copper is an endangered item, since worldwide demand for it is likely to exceed available supplies by the end of the present century.
[From Reflections]
Putting aside for a second that that’s nannystatism at its best, perhaps instead of telling people not to throw out their food (hey, I’ve got a 7/8ths used jar of peanut butter that just went past its expiration date, I’m not eating it) perhaps we could start, I don’t know, converting our waste food into fertilizer or fuel? Recycling for food has some serious flaws - the smell, the vermin, and did I mention the smell? But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to find ways to use these things. Spent coffee grounds, for instance? And spent tea leaves? I use them to fertilize my houseplants. Can we find a way to turn our expended food into something else like power?
A cross-Whitehall study into higher food costs has identified waste as a factor. The report said that British households disposed of four million tonnes of food each year that could have been eaten. The Cabinet Office inquiry into food policy, ordered by Mr Brown soon after he became Prime Minister, accuses families of wasting an average of £420 a year on food, The Times has learnt.
Mr Brown reinforced its message yesterday, calling on people to stop throwing food away as he travelled to the G8 summit in Japan. “If we are to get food prices down, we must do more to deal with unnecessary demands, such as by all of us doing more to reduce our food waste,” he said.
[From Waste not want not, Gordon Brown tells families - Times Online]
Just in case we didn’t have enough to worry about with the lack of renewables problem (and special thanks to my friend Corey for setting me straight in the comments, worth a read) and other energy woes, one of the reasons food is getting expensive could be raw materials shortages. Are we hitting the Malthusian limits of the earth? Can we start mining the moon yet? Or terraforming it and farming it?
In the past 14 months, the price of the raw material - phosphate rock - has surged by more than 700 per cent to more than $367 (£185) per tonne. As well as putting pressure on food prices, some researchers believe that the risk of a future phosphorus shortage blows a hole in the concept of biofuels as a “renewable” source of energy. Ethanol is not truly renewable if the essential fundamental element is, in reality, growing more scarce, researchers say. Within a few decades, according to forecasts used by scientists at Linköping University, in Sweden, a “peak phosphorus” crunch could represent a serious threat to agriculture as global reserves of high-quality phosphate rock go into terminal decline.
[From Scientists warn of lack of vital phosphorus as biofuels raise demand - Times Online ]
I put this on my tumblr blog, but it’s got me worried enough to post it here.
And while U.S. drivers fret and worry over how to pay for the Prius, the sad truth is that it doesn’t matter: By 2015, developing country oil demand will outstrip the rich world’s. They’re already in the driver’s seat: 90% of the demand growth over the next five years will come from Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, the IEA said.
[From Environmental Capital - WSJ.com : Peak Oil: IEA Inches Toward the Pessimists' Camp]
To all my classmates at ITP, the alum, the folks I knew in my dot com days, etc - read this article and the comments and commence worry.
There was never a question that oil was going to run out. Unless it’s abiogenic we’re in pretty obvious trouble. The folks who believe it’s abiogetic are all Russian and Ukrainian scientists, so far as I can tell, and while I’m sure they’re smart, I haven’t seen it in any of the peer reviewed journals in the West as accepted theory.
What’s to be done? I don’t know. Stephen Den Beste’s series on alternative energy remains the clearest I’ve seen on the subject. And friends? The report is grim.
What I -don’t- understand is why people haven’t started converting their homes and businesses to solar, or part solar, already. Perhaps it’s that there wasn’t the will and $5/gallon gas will make the will.
There are statistics at the cited article about how long it took to unwind the various problems caused both by the last Depression and the last Oil crisis, and frankly, it looks like it’s going to hurt.
I say this because I think people who have stickers that say “who needs oil, I ride the bus” are idiots - oil runs an awful lot more than just our vehicles. Hospitals, research, the very computer you’re reading this upon is very likely run by oil or part-oil solution. But they have the right idea, much as I hate to say it, insofar as the days of gasoline powered cars should be coming to an end right about… now.
A few glimmers, only glimmers, of hope.
- The Internet. The Manhattan Project employed around 130,000 people. The Internet is, at current estimate, a few billion. How does this help? Attacking the problems in a distributed way. We can’t change the second law of thermodynamics, but we can certainly offer spare computer cycles to model efficient engines, examine other sources of energy, and spread ideas on ways to conserve and use renewables.
- Computers generally. This is a double edged sword - as mentioned, they’re eating up fuel
- Nuclear. If it’s good enough to power 70% of France, it’s good enough for us here in the US. Come on, Congress, let’s get moving. I should note that this, too, is a stopgap - the world supply of nuclear energy isn’t renewable, either.
- Renewable energy. As Den Beste makes clear, the situation for that is grim and it’s not just because we’re not smart enough to solve the problem, there are some fundamental physics problems that aren’t solvable. There are some, like geothermal, that we’re clearly not tapping yet. Let’s get on that.
- Green Capitalism. This was always my belief - that there’s obviously money to be made in greening, so people are going to be greening. Nobody has ever gone broke appealing to people’s greed. The market will bear green capitalism out the higher oil prices get.
- Non-Ethanol Biofuels. Using corn was misguided and impacted the food supply. Brazil has a successful program. Considering the amount of food Americans throw out every year, someone suggesting it was a pound a week at least, we should be recapturing that food for fuel. Sure, it has a Back To The Future feel to it, but hey, it’s better than worldwide energy shortages.
- The Tesla car will likely change some of the vehicle playing field, but it’s a little late in the game for this.
- If the concern is that the “rest of the world” is catching up to American consumption levels, perhaps they’ll catch up to American innovation levels, too. That’s probably wishful thinking, but I’d be happy if successful renewable ideas came out of, say, India…
There are other glimmers, but that’s all the time I’ve got to spare in listing them. You’re encouraged to leave thoughts in the comments.
So what am I proposing we do? There’s going to be a boom in solar, because it’s something you can DIY at home and save money on over time. ITP students - consider this in your projects. Oscar Torres’s Helios project is amazing and extremely well timed. What other Solar and renewable projects have we had? I’ll be happy to post them here and give them what exposure I can.
Start small, too. There are floors that capture energy and bicycles that do too. What else can we, particularly the ITP community and our counterparts at similar schools, come up with to help?
I didn’t sing (sudden bout of shyness and stagefright, WEIRD) but had a good time.
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