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The Forum > Article Comments > Peak oil means peak food as well > Comments

Peak oil means peak food as well : Comments

By Michael Lardelli, published 13/7/2009

Lack of energy substitutes will affect the most fundamental of needs - food.

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There has been atmospheric cooling the last 8 years, and no new high global annual temperatures in the last 11 years. Anthropogenic (or man caused) global warming is not proved. None of the computer models replicate this fact.

The global warming adherents base their argument of proof on more than 20 different computer models called general circulation models (also known as global climate models or GCMs). Each computer model is composed of dozens of mathematical equations representing known scientific laws, theories, and hypotheses. Each equation has one or more constants. The constants associated with known laws are very well defined. The constants associated with known theories are generally accepted but probably some of them may be off by a factor of 2 or more, maybe even an order of magnitude. The equations representing hypotheses, well, sometimes the hypotheses are just plain wrong. Then each of these equations has to be weighted against each other for use in the computer models, so that adds an additional variable (basically an educated guess) for each law, theory, and hypothesis. This is where the models are tweaked to mimic past climate measurements.

The SCIENTIFIC METHOD is: (1) Following years of academic study of the known physical laws and accepted theories, and after reviewing some data, come up with a hypothesis to explain the data. (2) Develop a plan to obtain and analyze new data. (3) Collect and analyze the data, this may even require new technology not previously available. (4) Determine if the hypothesis is correct, needs refinement, or is wrong. Either way, new data is available for other researchers. (5) Submit results, including data, for peer review and publication.

The output of the computer models run out nearly 90 years forward is considered to be data, but it is not a measurement of a physical phenomenon. Also, there is no way to analyze this so called data to determine if any or which of the hypotheses in the models are correct, need refinement, or are wrong. This method cannot indicate if other new hypotheses need to be generated and incorporated into the models.
Posted by NucEngineer, Monday, 13 July 2009 8:58:19 AM
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NucEngineer says 'There has been atmospheric cooling the last 8 years, and no new high global annual temperatures in the last 11 years.'

So why was the last 10 years the hottest on record? and significantly hotter than the previous 10 years according to the Global Land-Ocean Temperature Index, with 2005 being the highest on record.
Posted by PeterA, Monday, 13 July 2009 9:31:45 AM
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The NYMEX has light sweet crude futures at $79 in Dec 2014. Doesn't look like peak oil, anytime soon?
Posted by OC617, Monday, 13 July 2009 10:05:38 AM
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Timely post Michael, given the recent BOM report on the
drying of SE Australia
summarised on bravenewclimate.com. I'm not quite so depressed
about the net import of fruit and veg. This is a dollar net
figure, not one based on something like calories. I'm guessing
if you looked at tonnage or calories the answer would
be different. e.g., We are a huge net
exporter of fish based on dollars, but on tonnage we are usually
a net importer, this is because we export the expensive stuff
(tuna to Japan) and import
the cheap stuff. Your other figure on food exports deserves full
attention.
Posted by Geoff Russell, Monday, 13 July 2009 10:51:02 AM
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Global warming vs local non-warming. Peak Oil vs oil price falls. Both could be prime examples of non-linear short term behaviour which we dismiss at out peril. The underlying trend could catch up on us like a ton of bricks. In as little as five years time there could be simultaneous shortages of food, fuel and water. If so it seems rather short sighted to prop up the retail and finance industries when we should be investing in alternative energy and alternative food production models.

Despite short term signals consider the evidence. The sea level is rising steadily. Murray-Darling inflows are declining. Oil production has not returned to its plateau of 2005-2008 and appears to be in 3-5% annual decline. Food production needs not only abundant water but ten kilojoules of diesel and nitrogen fertiliser for every kilojoule we eat. While crude oil is now over 50% depleted concentrated phosphate is 70% depleted. To cap it off we are returning to El Nino conditions. Keep up that optimism.
Posted by Taswegian, Monday, 13 July 2009 10:56:40 AM
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OC617,

Your confidence in the ability of the market to predict prices is amazing, and nothing if not consistent:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8040#125827
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7981#124984
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7213#110938

This consistency is bemusing considering last year the markets have shown they could not forecast the price of the money they control in the next month, let alone the price of a house in a year.

Anyway, I see the price of crude has increased 50% in the last 6 months. At that rate next year is should match its 2008 highs. No doubt you will still be beating the same drum then.

Speaking of drums, I see the CEO one last industry "peak oil" holdout, Shell, has grudging acknowledged its reality:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3548

This brings him into line with the rest of the industry. There was no detectable reaction in the price of long term futures of oil, of course.
Posted by rstuart, Monday, 13 July 2009 11:06:12 AM
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Informed folks are getting more scared, fools are increasing the fervor of their denial.
The "perfect storm" of population, weather and energy is approaching. There is an attitude common in the West which is "let the poor take care of it". This is a reflection of the kidult culture common in the entitlement classes.
There is also the "God will be done" attitude. God wouldn't much up His garden for His people would he? (Nah! Bloody Greenies)
The fear is that we will drop the ball on civilisation and hand our kids a *much* less civilised world. The gains of a few scientists and engineers over the last century will be consumed and buried in the refuse of millions of humans descended to animal goals: safety, water, food.
Whilst we laude the biggest, greediest profiteers today, we will really regret letting them displace statesmen and run the show for so long.
There may or may not be time to avoid a whole lot of pain. The author is correct: blind optimism based on ignorance is a real danger.
Posted by Ozandy, Monday, 13 July 2009 12:31:33 PM
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The next 10 - 30 years will be "interesting" indeed. Instead of investing in other forms of energy generation what dose our government do? Cuts the subside and lets plants close down. What the hell is with these people? Surely they have the information at hand as well? I guess they are all too busy talking up the economy rather then doing something useful.
Posted by Charger, Monday, 13 July 2009 12:38:29 PM
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Not warming hey.... well you tell my fruit trees that! My peach and apple trees are in full flower, and the mulberries are shooting like mad after their mid winter pruning.

And trusting the NYMEX to know what the price of oil will be in years to come is like asking then to make sure the economy doesn't tank. Oh, forgot, it HAS tanked...!

Professor Laurie Sparke, a leading Australian automotive engineering expert, has warned of an energy crunch that could make the 1970's oil crises seem small-time. He says that in coming years Australia may not be able to buy oil, at any price. Got it? ANY oil. So forget $89, because that what you might have to pay for a quarter of a tank on the black market!

Peak Discovery is STILL 1964....
Posted by Coorangreeny, Monday, 13 July 2009 3:30:32 PM
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Don't let fear get the better of you Michael. Keep going. Speak up and out as often as is necessary.

I think you will find that Dmitry Orlov (who would no doubt share your views) is gaining popularity in official circles.
Posted by KTranter, Monday, 13 July 2009 4:31:16 PM
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Thank you Michael for your opinion piece, what worries me is that we have known about the problems that the world faces for a long time and nothing has been done.
For example we were being warned about water problems, and its effect on the River Murray in the 70's and we still have not sorted it out.
So I am pessimistic about the future.
Posted by PeterA, Monday, 13 July 2009 4:49:09 PM
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“I am pessimistic about the future because I have seen and understood the data on resources. I know that oil production peaked in July 2008. …..
I know that our use of other resources - such as water and phosphate - is critically unsustainable. Now that energy is declining there will not be enough to invest in building the alternative energy future that many of us dream of.”

Questions:

1. Is the earth running out of oil?

2. Alternatively the earth has an abundance of oil and the problems are:

2.1 The capacity to pump oil from particular fields is limited?

2.2 There has been insufficient investment and development in existing oil fields?

2.3 There has been insufficient effort in seeking new sources of oil?

2.4 When new sources of oil are discovered such as the Arctic region. What is the lead time to for a new field to enter into production?

2.5 Is there limited refining capacity world wide?

2.6 Are there political and administrative considerations limiting production in some countries?

2.7 To what extent is terrorism, war and civil unrest limiting production in some countries?

2.8 The major oil producing counties operate a cartel- OPEC. How does this influence the supply of oil?
Posted by anti-green, Monday, 13 July 2009 6:00:58 PM
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A few points on Lardelli's article. When the peak oil was first forecast some years back - and here I refer to the modern, serious forecasts, not the ravings of the Club of Rome and the like - the original proposal by Campbell et al did not suggest for a moment that oil output would stop (no-one in their right mind would). The concern was that production of easy-lift, comparatively cheap oil would ease off before all the alternative sources of supply - oil sands being the big one - came into effect. They were concerned there would be disruption. Well I have yet to be convinced peak oil is here. I looked briefly at the link in the article and it points to another peak oiler reanalysing figures to suit the argument. But in any case the Canadian advances in oil sands would make that peak less of a concern. Anyway, we will know when the world is past that peak - it will be when the oil industry seriously starts to exploit the oil shale deposits in Queensland.
Back in the mid-80s David Suzuki, also a geneticist, tried to convince me the world's oil supplies would run out by the end of the century. I thought he was talking nonsense then and, sorry Lardelli, I am not convinced by this article either.
Posted by Curmudgeon, Monday, 13 July 2009 6:11:26 PM
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I feel optimistic after reading Michael article. What is needed is a reversal of our sacred economic system or it will wipe us out. The first step is in this outline of an article that was rejected last month by this Forum.
Today’s major concerns are unemployment and global warming, which must be fixed right now, for our children’s sake.
Pollution from the use of fossil fuels appears early whereas; today’s greenhouse gases obscure their outcome by taking decades to increase world’s temperature to an unliveable state.
Labour can be increased by decreasing all taxes and charges on it. Greenhouse gases can be reduced by increasing their taxes. These measures can be implemented without a revolution or any hardship; on the contrary, they will improve our life.
The reason we have periodical unemployment is due to charging and taxing employers for using labour and taxing labour while keeping taxes low on profits, resources and energy to gives a competitive advantage. Thus the burden of raising taxes falls more on wages, salaries and the GST, but those taxes in turn reduce purchasing power, which results in unemployment: unless the economy, by magic, keeps growing.
We allocate taxes and charges according to what needs to be promoted or discouraged, like high tax on tobacco and alcohol and less tax for fresh foods. This must be applied to employment, resources depletion, and greenhouse gases.
Today we need to increase tax on carbon and a decrease tax on labour until we stop emitting carbon and everyone is employed. Halving labour’s cost will result in employing more people instead of machines.
Small businesses have the largest labour cost and the greatest inconvenience with the required paper work. They will benefit from these measures. The welfare of people is the responsibility of their community, while the responsibility of business is to provide a safe working environment and supply useful services to the community without pollutants. The tax lost from labour for governments will be offset somewhat by smaller wage bills; In addition there will be increased revenue due to taxes on carbon and non-renewable resources.
Posted by Tena, Monday, 13 July 2009 8:34:31 PM
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I am always bemused when people claim to be able to accurately
predict the future, for along comes some variable which proves
them wrong.

I remember a story of not so long ago, when ABARE was making
yet another prediction, when it was pointed out to the
person, how wrong previous ABARE predictions had been.

At least the bloke was honest, responding that if he could
accurately predict the future, he would not be working for
ABARE :)

.
Posted by Yabby, Monday, 13 July 2009 10:06:37 PM
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Curmudgeon, you can't be serious about tar sands...... what do they produce now... is it one or two million barrels a day when demand is over eighty five million? And it's all produced by turning pristine Canadian water into toxic ponds many many square kilometres in size, and huge quantities of gas that Canada will soon also run out of...?

And REALLY, the Club of Rome were RAVING? Raving about what exactly? As it turns out, I am reading the very latest edition of Limits to Growth, and from where I sit, well, they were and still are spot on.... We have hit Limits to Growth (that first book, BTW never mentioned Peak Oil at all) and are now well into overshoot. It's going to get ugly alright.
Posted by Coorangreeny, Monday, 13 July 2009 10:48:12 PM
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Michael, you know I'm a peaknik from way back. But even I have to question linking to TSW about alternative energy. Ted doesn’t seem to acknowledge many of the recent trends in renewable energy.

I’m convinced this is a massive crisis, and needs the Federal government to take a ‘war time’ economy to it. But ultimately, if the ERoEI of wind and various other renewables is high enough, our children or grandchildren may come out of the energy bottleneck we’re about to enter. Sure we’ll have to ration, car-pool, cycle, walk, and do whatever it takes to prioritize the remaining fuel to get the next infrastructure running. But some think tanks are calculating a plan to do this in 10 years!
http://www.beyondzeroemissions.org/zerocarbonplan

Peter Newman has explained that electric cars may help ‘spread the load’ in grids. (I’m no fan of cars, and really wish we’d build more attractive New Urbanism). But if we need “some” transport in a post-oil world, with a city plan that has a more disciplined use of the car, then surely those sectors that MUST have cars should have an EV running on renewable electricity.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2009/2571785.htm

I am completely behind you raising the concerns you do. You’re asking the right questions, but I’m not sure you’ve thoroughly debunked some of the ‘solutions’ the way you think you have. I really wonder if you sound ‘agenda driven’ by not more comprehensively debunking some of the ‘solutions’ you seem so pessimistic about and showing why electric trolley buses cannot quickly be deployed to become the backbone of “corner store villages” that we will start to create in our vast suburban sprawl. Once this electric lifeline is going in there, it is easier to divert the remaining liquid fuel to agriculture.

Remember: while oil will decrease exponentially, solar and wind have been increasing exponentially for the last decade. They don't produce oil, but maybe we won't need as much by then. There is hope.
Posted by Eclipse Now, Monday, 13 July 2009 11:12:35 PM
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Coorangreeny, the Club of Rome is a byword for loony forecasting. By most of the original forecasting - the forecasts made back in the 70s -we should have all run out of resources decades ago. Well, we haven't and despite the assertions of the author of the article and others - and more loony forecasting in the Limits to Growth - the end is still no where in sight. As for oil sands, the Canadian story is a complex one but basically the country has gone from nowhere to having the third largest exploitable reserves. Just to take your 5 million barrel figure (I am assuming its correct) its just part of the switch from conventional to non-conventional production sources for oil.
As one example of the nonsense that often occurs in the limits to growth debate, the article suggets that out population will outrun food supply in decades to come - pointing to a long standing argument about how much of Australia's food production is exported.
Sorry, just don't buy it. The problem has always been to sell Australia's food output. If there were more buyers then more would be produced. As it is, the actual area given over to food production activities may well have reached a peak and is now declining - a trend similar to one happening in all the developed countries.
The limits just aint there. Sorry.
Posted by curmudgeonathome, Tuesday, 14 July 2009 12:14:52 AM
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One of our biggest problems is that most people fail to grasp the consequences of exponential growth.

To suggest that the consumption of oil (or any thing else) increases constantly by a certain percentage each year means that it periodically doubles, but it also means that in that period we will have used more than the total of all the previous periods combined.

In other words, if our consumption (conservatively) doubles in the next 10 years, then between 2009 and 2019 we would have used more than the total of the previous 100 years.

This can be oil, food, water - anything that we consume, not to mention population growth.

Now consider that it takes more calories to grow our food than the food actually generates (fertilizers, transportation, harvesting) and throw in an increasing global population and eventually there must be a crisis point.

That's what the Club of Rome was formed to investigate.
Posted by wobbles, Tuesday, 14 July 2009 1:48:16 AM
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Curmudgeon,

This is a link to a CSIRO paper comparing the Limits to Growth projections with 30 years of reality:

http://www.csiro.au/files/files/plje.pdf

According to the abstract: "Contrary to popular belief, the Limits to Growth scenarios by a team of analysts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did not predict world collapse by the end of the 20th century... The analysis [in the CSIRO paper] shows that 30 years of historical data compares favorably with key features of a business as usual scenario called the "stadard run" scenario, which results in collapse of the global system midway through the 21st century."

You might also look at an article by John Vidal in this week's Weekly Guardian on the 30 million hectares of good agricultural land, mostly in Third World countries, that governments and companies in food-importing countries have been buying up because they no longer trust the international market to supply them, now that the big food surpluses are gone and they have to worry about suppliers restricting exports, as in 2008. According to Vidal, such a deal with Dae Woo in Madagascar was a major factor in the recent coup. The present government there has abrogated the deal. Just think of Ireland during the Potato Famine, when British troops guarded food exports while people were starving.

Judging from the Agmates link posted in the article, our government authorities are either incompetent or lying to us about how much food is exported. Aren't you concerned about this?
Posted by Divergence, Tuesday, 14 July 2009 10:25:56 AM
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Thanks for all the comments on this piece.

I would like to point out that the title I originally gave to it was "Make Optimism Our Enemy" which is why the essay seems off-topic until the end. Online Opinion changed the title illustrating that it really is politically incorrect not to be optimistic!

Just some points quickly. Eclipse Now - I always admire your optimism but, as you might understand from my essay "Energy is Everything" it is the embodied energy required to build the alternative energy infrastructure that determines whether or not it can be done, not whether some economics talking head declares it to be feasible or not. What we understand of the "laws of economics" just fail to apply on the downcurve after the energy peak.

"antigreen" - all your questions on peak oil can be answered by any basic text on the subject. There are also some primers online e.g.: www.energybulletin.net/primer

Curmudgeon - amusing to hear you slander the Club or Rome's "Limits to Growth" report when the lead author of the original report was recently awarded the 2009 Japan Prize for his efforts:

www.energybulletin.net/node/47800

Also, you should be aware that someone at the CSIRO recently analysed the original projections of this study and found that they were quite good despite the primitive nature of that 1970s computer model:

www.csiro.au/files/files/plje.pdf

An article on the possibilities for expansion of oil production from tar sands was published here:

www.fysast.uu.se/ges/files/Tarsandsarticle.pdf

Something a little less "academic" on the topic is here:

www.energybulletin.net/node/48939

And my essay "Earth as a Magic Pudding" explains why massive hydrocarbon reserves do not equate to massive available energy reserves.

Regards,

Michael
Posted by Michael Lardelli, Tuesday, 14 July 2009 10:30:00 AM
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Michael Lardelli - go back and look at the CSIRO paper you recommend. In fact, they fudge most of it. It plays up stuff like the population estimates, in which the CofR is probably right and plays down where it was obviously wildly wrong, such as putting limits on resources of metals and the like.
There is also a lot of fancy talk about energy resources being within bounds to gloss over the fact that the energy industry is still there and shows no real sign of going away; despite vast increases in population food production is still more than keeping pace, and so on.
I am shocked that CSIRO resources should be permitted to produce this nonsense. As for the lead author producing a prize, it merely confirms my view that you merely have to shriek in alarm that 'we'll all be ruined' and you get a prize..
Posted by Curmudgeon, Tuesday, 14 July 2009 11:46:15 AM
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Thanks for that great set of links, Michael. It would help lazy buggers like myself if you put http:// in front of them next time.

Politically, I doubt anything will happen until the oil price hits painful levels - as in causes financial hardship for voters. We are beyond the peak now, so the only thing holding down oil prices is the GFC. It's effects are already starting to fade and oil prices are again rising rapidly. I can't help but wonder what the trigger point would be. When petrol hits $2/litre? $5/litre?

Right now it hasn't hit home. My daughter is will graduate this year, and is eagerly awaiting her first pay check. She is planning to spend it on a shiny new car, so she can ditch the bomb her daddy gave her. Daddy tells her this is nuts - she will not be able to afford to drive her expensive new petrol car by the end of its lifetime. Right now she thinks daddy is nuts. When the light bulb finally goes off in her head and she realises this is for real, I'll know society has reached an inflection point. I am hoping this will happen before she buys the car, but the odds aren't looking good.
Posted by rstuart, Tuesday, 14 July 2009 11:50:46 AM
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Curmudgeon,

The limits are there. We live on a finite world. I would have thought that was obvious. But on to: "If there where more people to buy Australia's food then we produce more" Wouldn't that assume that...

A. The people buying the food can afford what we produce.
B. We have the arable land to produce the food (I can't remember the figures but last nights Australian story had information on how much land was degraded).
C. We have the cheep endless oil to drive our tractors/trucks/trains/ships to move the food?

Given that oil has peaked (even if not readily apparent) the cost of production has to rise which feeds back into point A. Modern fertilizers also depend on gas / oil. See point C. Good farming land looks like its in short supply world wide.

I suppose the really interesting think is that we will all get to see if the Club of Rome was right. Probably in about 30 years or so. We really do live in interesting times.
Posted by Charger, Tuesday, 14 July 2009 12:47:36 PM
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Michael I share your lack of optimism for our future. We moved to Tasmania to 'escape' life in the inner city and are now on our own small farm growing our own organic food, learning how to feed ourselves.

We've given up highly paid jobs in the IT sector to do this. People think we're mad, and I suppose life doesn't seem that different right this minute. However, it's the lack of foresight and the blind optimism that the general person on the street displays that worries me - in the face of so much evidence of our society slipping I cannot believe I still meet people who pump out child after child, who think the only successful life is to climb the corporate ladder at the expense of those around you, who spray their land with pesticides and fertilisers (whilst bitterly complaining about the growing cost of this method), or who think that 10 years down the track life will still be as it is now.

There are a number of peakniks around us, and even among them there are quibbles about who will get their way - husbands wanting ride-on lawnmowers or tractors, wives wanting a new car. In addition to 2 kids a few more kids would be nice too, to 'help on the farm later on'. What part of peak oil/food do these guys not get?

I think you can only start preparing if you truly understand and believe where the world is heading - and with the current media, it is hard for people to do that. Even with sufficient literature out there (Heinberg, Kunstler, Strahan, Campbell, etc etc) it is difficult truly get your head around it and ignore the current paradigm.

It's hard doing your own thing when the rest of the world thinks you're wrong or mad - but thinking everything will be ok, or 'the great technology god will save us' is the real mad thing. Unfortunately most people will only find out too late, and I would think the real mayhem will start then.
Posted by Tasmaniac, Tuesday, 14 July 2009 2:01:59 PM
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I was rather hoping this was going to get into what needs to happen in order to maintain food production in the face of declining oil availability. Unfortunately it did not. All the article really offered was the rather unhelpful “optimism is bad” mantra. As if somehow being pessimistic will somehow help solve problems.

It seems to me that there are things that can be done to assist agricultural production in the face of increasing cost of / reduction in availability of oil. It also seems to me that Australian agriculture, because of its lower dependence on oil compared with North America or Europe, is in a position to exploit these. No-till agriculture has massively reduced fuel use and has been widely adopted in Australia. One problem Australia will face is the tyranny of distance.

Michael, your comments about agricultural exports from Australia are muddled. The argument being had on the Agmates piece is about the monetary value of exports. This is rather different from the amount of foodstuffs. The latter being the important issue if you want to say Australia will not be producing sufficient food to feed itself. A quick trip to the ABS website told me that in 2006 Australia produced 42.5 million tons of grain crops and exported 24 million tons of them, or just over half. The same could be done for other sectors. An example is meat. Total supply (including imports) was 4.5 million tons. Exports were 1.8 million tons or about 40%.
Posted by Agronomist, Tuesday, 14 July 2009 5:31:35 PM
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Charger - others - sorry but the real problem with Australian farming has been a long-term decline in food prices in real terms, notwithstanding short term swings such as is occuring now. Farmers have been able to keep ahead of price declines by continuous improvements in real factor productivity. That productivity increase seems to have paused of late, which may be due to the hold-up in the next step of adopting genetically-modified foods. Some more work on this point would not go astray.
I wasted time reading that paper by Turner on the Club of Rome forecasts. No wonder the forecasts were panned at the time - they are so simplistic as to be useless. Turner's paper amounts to no more than noting that most things have gotten better (seems to be what it is saying) in the last few decades, and that the original forecasts said that things would get better in the those decades, therefore the bit about collapse around 2050 must be right. Bwhahahahahah! You can't be serious? The only point of any real interest is the assertion that we can calculate total reserves of resources. The resources industry abandoned all that long ago. The amount of available reserves of any resource varies according to price and exploration activity, and not much else. Sure there must be a limit - somewhere - but no one in the resources industry is looking for it. Better find another crisis..
Posted by curmudgeonathome, Tuesday, 14 July 2009 11:30:38 PM
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Agronomist - thanks for the somewhat reassuring points on grain and meat exports - better than I thought but still nowhere near a 400% excess. As grain prices rise (due to increasing demand and decreasing supply) we will see grain-fed meat prices rise even faster. This will dampen meat demand and release more grain for human consumption (since a large proportion of our grain goes to meat production). Nevertheless, if you have a production capacity surplus what you do not want to do is to grow to the limits of that surplus. The surplus is a buffer/safety net against adverse conditions that reduce production (e.g. crop diease/climate change/oil decline).

You may be correct that Australian agriculture uses less oil than the US - e.g. per kg of food produced although I would really like to see some figures on this (and I often hear about minimum tillage when reading US articles). However, it is incorrect to believe that we are less dependent on oil if we use less per kg of food produced. Like the US and Europe, our ag machinery is still 100% dependent on oil (and fertilizer production is also very oil dependent). In fact, while it might seem counterintuitive, if we are using less oil per kg produced in our agriculture (but are still 100% dependent upon oil) then we are, in fact, MORE vulnerable to the effects of oil shortages/high oil prices since we are less able to make efficiency gains. (Inefficiency/waste is a buffer of spare capacity that can be tapped when necessary - there is nothing less vulnerable to resource shortages than a system operating at close to 100% efficiency!)
Posted by Michael Lardelli, Wednesday, 15 July 2009 9:40:53 AM
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The importance of a buffer is borne out by the Irish Potato Famine of 1848. Most of the deaths and forced emigration occurred because a significant proportion of the population lived on land holdings that were too small to feed a family on anything but potatoes, so they had no alternatives when the late blight arrived. In any case, knowing that we export half our grain and 40% of our meat doesn't give me a lot of confidence for my children, given that at our current population growth rate of 1.9%, our population is set to double in a little over 36 years.

Curmudgeon,

Food production is not keeping up with population growth globally, at least according to the UN, which says that there are growing numbers of hungry people in both absolute and relative terms

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090619/ap_on_re_eu/eu_un_world_hunger

World grain production per person peaked in 1984. See

http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Grain/2006_data.htm

You have seriously misrepresented Turner's paper, part of a pattern of denial in which any source that challenges your Cornucopian worldview is dismissed as somehow unreliable. Nowhere does he say that we are going to have a collapse by the middle of the century, just that what has happened to date more or less matches the original business-as-usual scenario that does end in this way. So far as nonrenewable resources are concerned, "the analysis here assumes that non-fuel materials will not create resource contraints", just the opposite of what you are attributing to him.

As Paul Krugman said in his June 28 New York Times column,

"But if you watched the debate on Friday [in the US Congress], you didn’t see people who’ve thought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of being interested in the truth. They don’t like the political and policy implications of climate change, so they’ve decided not to believe in it — and they’ll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds their denial."
Posted by Divergence, Wednesday, 15 July 2009 10:38:54 AM
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It still means Australia could potentially afford to double its population without being in danger of running out of food. Other problems are likely to occur, but lack of food will probably not strike first. In contrast, many other countries around the world simply don’t have this luxury. Any increase in population will further stress food supplies and indeed is inevitable, given the lack of opportunity and economic development these countries have.

My comments about oil use (or should I say liquid fuel use) are based on knowledge of agriculture in the US compared with Australia. There are few good figures as far as I know and it depends on what is counted; oil, natural gas or all energy use and whether you count transport of product, manufacturing of product and re-transport into the mix. Estimates from the range from 2 to 20% of all energy use. You might find something useful for Australia in here http://www.garnautreview.org.au/chp7.htm

The greatest fuel source for fertilizers at present comes from natural gas rather than oil. It is also possible to make them from coal http://business.theage.com.au/business/china-coal-deal-could-signal-thaw-in-relations-20090713-dius.html

Europe is unlikely to adopt no-till farming practices widely anytime soon. There are increasing legislative actions that will encourage continued tillage. What farmers will do instead is move to biodiesel made from palm oil imported from Indonesia and Malaysia. Australian farmers could potentially do the same.
Posted by Agronomist, Wednesday, 15 July 2009 1:21:33 PM
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Agronomist is speaking some sense.. as for being in a pattern of denial as accused by Divergence... You guys are seriously concerning yourself with a dud report justly dismissed 30 years ago, quoting reports about food shortages that are mainly lobbying documents and ignoring strong evidence concerning major reductions in poverty (changes in both China and India), as well as strong evidence of long-term-real reductions in prices for all commodities (one of the major reasons LtG has been largely forgotten, aside from some green groups) and I'm the one in denial? Okay, well it must all be true then.
Posted by Curmudgeon, Wednesday, 15 July 2009 1:48:55 PM
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Actually the last line of my previous message should have been "there is nothing MORE vulnerable to resource shortages than a system operating at close to 100% efficiency" (so we certainly don't want to double our population just because we think we currently have the capacity to).

One problem with discussions of oil vulnerability is that many people seem to assume we are operating in a command economy where oil will be diverted to agriculture as needed. One hopes that such will be the case but it is by no means certain. Declining oil supplies is likely to cause supplies to become much more subject to disruption (through conflict, lower stocks etc.) and this is a real worry for ag production. We have already had problems with diesel supplies around harvest time in SA previously since out storage capacity is so small. Rising oil prices also put great financial pressure on farmers (who are already under great stress there) and could force them to the wall before the government decides to do anything about it. Once they are gone they are gone....
Posted by Michael Lardelli, Wednesday, 15 July 2009 5:19:27 PM
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Michael Lardelli

You may be correct about Peak oil, it is not my subject. However, on general grounds there will be clearly many different opinions on this matter.

Here is a preliminary report of a vast new oil deposit in North Dakota.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D99EAOH01&show_article=1
Posted by anti-green, Wednesday, 15 July 2009 6:09:50 PM
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I think there are 2 different types of "optimism" here. One is that in which economic, population, resource consumption, etc. growth can keep on going unbridled. This optimism is foolish, as the article suggests. But who is to say that "growth" (i.e. materialistic growth) is only way things can be "good", i.e. why does "growth" = "good"? This paradigm of "growth" = "good" must change -- including the idea that more, more, more _material_ things (i.e. materialism) is a disaster. Agreed.

But I don't believe that idea that the only way one can be happy and that things can be good is with ever more materialism and material growth, which is what _seems_ to be being touted here as it just says "optimism" with no further qualification, is bad. I believe we don't need all that stuff. So I would have the other optimism: that we can have a world that is better than the one we have now. But where "better" here does _not_ equal "ever more material things" and "ever more GROWTH". The idea that a world without this type of "GROWTH" and stuff is going to be "bad" still seems like, well, stuck in the very materialist paradigm one is critiquing.

Now as for getting there, that may be rough. And it will be rougher the more we try to stick to the materialistic stuff.

Another false equation that pops up all too often is "progress = materialistic growth". I challenge that one too. Nonmaterial progress is sorely lacking in a lot of places, and ultimately this underpins all the other problems and is the very reason we make such false equations.
Posted by mike3, Wednesday, 15 July 2009 7:57:46 PM
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Michael there is room for optimism. In your article you say

"Now that energy is declining there will not be enough to invest in building the alternative energy future that many of us dream of."

This implies that we are running out of energy so fast we do not have enough energy to build and energy alternative future. Luckily this is not the case - although we do have start quickly. The reason it is not the case is that we know that each time we double our capacity of any technology it reduces in costs and energy to produce by some percentage. It is likely that on average renewables will come down in energy cost by about 20% each time we double capacity. As we have many doublings to go we can take today's capacity, work out how many doublings and find an energy cost.

My calculations show that by the time we have replaced fossil fuels we will be producing energy at well below half the current cost both in energy and money.

Of course the sooner we start the "doublings" the better.

The good news - which might seem bad to some - is that solar and geothermal renewables are a fraction of 1% so it does not take too many doublings to get the energy cost of these systems down.

However we have to start sometime and the longer we wait the more difficult it gets so the message is to start to direct investment to renewables in a massive way and we might just get through this.
Posted by Fickle Pickle, Thursday, 16 July 2009 3:17:04 AM
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Anti-Green,

A thousand barrels a day is not a lot when the world wants to 84 million barrels of oil a day. The oil field would need to be the size of Saudi Arabia which I doubt it is. Even if it where it only delays the inevitable.

Ficke Pickle, renewables are never going to make up for loss of oil (in The Last Oil shock David Strahan estimated you'd need a wind farm the size of Wales to run England's car fleet alone on electricity). I don't see many wind turbine factories being built here.

Australia is not moving towards them in any way shape or form and that is the issue. By the time people realize it will be too late. Does anyone here think our current political system is up for this kind of challenge?

Cheap energy is utterly vital to our current economy -- oil reached its highest cost right before the g.f.c hit. If we don't have the cheap energy then its a feed back loop going down, not up.

But as I said before, we'll all get to see who's right.
Posted by Charger, Thursday, 16 July 2009 12:59:51 PM
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Agronomist,

Australia's grain production is enormously variable from year to year, largely due to variations in the supply of water. This is why Sydney has to store 8 times as much water per person as London. You don't want people going hungry because of a multi-year drought, which the climatologists are telling us is going to be more likely in the future. I agree with you absolutely about the need for more agricultural research, but raising public awareness that there is a problem, as Michael is doing, obviously has to be the first step. No doubt agriculture can continue, but it will get a lot more expensive after the cheap oil is gone. A major cause of those very high grain prices last year, provoking food riots in 34 countries, was higher oil prices feeding through to higher prices for farm inputs.

Curmudgeon,

You brought up Limits to Growth, not us. If Lester Brown and his institute are good enough for the editors of Scientific American (judging from his article in the May issue), they ought to be good enough for OLO. This doesn't mean that he is always right - even Einstein was wrong about quantum mechanics - but refuting him requires evidence, not just automatic dismissal of anything he says. Likewise, statistics from the UN or the US Department of Agriculture don't become tainted because someone has graphed them and presented them in a convenient form. You are quibbling about sources to derail discussion of the real issues.

Here is some more information from that well known lobby group, the World Bank

http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:IDdDbGOLescJ:econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/0,,contentMDK:21665883~pagePK:64165401~piPK:64165026~theSitePK:469372,00.html+world+grain+prices+2008&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au
Posted by Divergence, Friday, 17 July 2009 11:36:54 AM
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Divergence, the major causes of higher food prices in 2007 was supply could not meet demand. Supply was down because of major droughts in major exporting countries like Australia, Argentina, Canada, coupled with policy changes in the EU and US which moved grain into biofuels production. This was exacerbated by hoarding by several exporters, particularly in the rice market.

The effect of the EU and US policies was to move grains into biofuels and away from animal feed. The impact was higher in the US, because they went to ethanol rather than biodiesel. The policies also reduced the area planted to wheat in both the US and EU. The lack of corn availability for animal feed, increased demand for other coarse grains and wheat. This coupled with reduced over all availability of food grains created a massive price spike.

My point still stands, the population of Australia could increase substantially before Australia would be unable to feed itself. Other countries do not have that luxury. Increasing population in Australia is likely to have substantial impacts in other areas before it does so on food prices.

Food prices in Australia are to some extent at the mercy of factors occurring elsewhere. Farmers have not been able to effectively pass on the higher costs of production, except when supply is short. This has resulted in the terms of trade for farmers diminishing rapidly over the last 30 years. The relative price of food is much less now than it was 30 years ago and is much less for Australian consumers than it is for consumers in third world countries.

Last point, if fuel prices increase too much, biofuels and other alternatives become more practical and no doubt will be used. This could have a serious effect on food availability and food prices throughout the world. Australia, by virtue of its substantial exports will not go short of food, but prices will rise.
Posted by Agronomist, Friday, 17 July 2009 1:30:08 PM
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Agronomist,

The sources I have read all include your points, but they also claim that high oil prices have been important too. See for example

http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/testimony/rosegrant20080507.asp

I agree with you about the problems in poor countries, and you are probably right that population growth will cause other serious problems here long before Australians go hungry, at least under present circumstances. However, what if the climatologists are right about what global warming will do to rainfall and evaporation in our food-growing regions? There are still uncertainties, but it might be better if we didn't bet the farm that they are wrong.
Posted by Divergence, Friday, 17 July 2009 3:19:19 PM
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This HD video on Youtube (only a few minutes) pretty much says it all about the direction we should be heading in, and fast.

By America's Congress for New Urbanism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGJt_YXIoJI

http://www.cnu.org/
Posted by Eclipse Now, Friday, 17 July 2009 9:11:46 PM
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Eclipse Now

Due to illness/accident I never completed my degree in Landscape Architecture, then I see a little gem of inspiration like the Youtube film to which you linked and wonder if there isn't something I could still do within Environmental work.

Thank you
Posted by Fractelle, Saturday, 18 July 2009 10:09:55 AM
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That's very kind of you to thank me but I'm not architect or town planner, just love the 3 main varieties of New Urbanism, Ecocity, and Township.

Try this!

This 15 minute movie at the top of the page is WORTH watching because: * it is happening in Australi over the next few years, somewhere south of Sydney
* it is extremely attractive, being "more European than European" in design and yet not 'ecovillage' or for hippies
* for the mainstream. A town plan that is SO beautiful, car free, yet allows "disciplined" use of the car outside the town walls... anyway, watch the film to understand. Claude spoke at TEDx Sydney this year.
http://villageforum.com/

Also, just have a quick look at this 'Before, during, and after' illustration of what a "big box" chainstore / Department store and car park can become, if we rezone and put our minds to it!
http://www.ecocitybuilders.org/downtown.html

(This last one really IS a hippies dream! I LIKE it! ;-)
Posted by Eclipse Now, Saturday, 18 July 2009 8:44:44 PM
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Eclipse Now

Thanks again - there is a Village Project near Melbourne. The second link - I have to admit resembles one of my uni projects from so long ago.

A word that comes to mind is 'zeitgeist' - which is desperately needed for a universal change from dependency on fossil energy to self-sustaining environments. The number of people who still believe in business-as-usual is astounding, but then humans are often loath to give up on anything that challenges their entire belief system.

Good to meet a kindred spirit.
Posted by Fractelle, Sunday, 19 July 2009 11:05:55 AM
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Cheers... I wish architecture and town planning had more people like you in it! If you are in Melbourne I'd recommend this podcast as they cover Australian activist news, but also a lot of Melbourne and Victorian news comes up as well.

Just one more link and I'll leave you alone! (I promise! ;-)

I love podcasts... I listen to my iPod mainly for science podcasts across the net (Scientific American, The Science Show with Robyn Williams, Science Friday on NPR news, all downloaded conveniently into my little iPod). Anyway, there's a Melbourne show I think you might like.

Just type in "Beyond Zero Emissions" into your iTunes search function (click on the iTunes store button first if you're not already familiar with it) and it should come up. Click subscribe.

If that doesn't work download their podcasts manually.

http://www.beyondzeroemissions.org/

The reason I love these guys is they're regularly interviewing all my heroes nationally and internationally, rave about Biochar and renewable energy and trolley bus systems, and are developing an optimistic 10 year plan for getting Australia off all fossil fuels, hopefully properly costed as well. Some say getting off fossil fuels in 10 years is a dream, but it seems a worthy dream to me and worth setting as a goal, even if we fail and it takes 15 or 20 years we will have at least TRIED!

http://www.beyondzeroemissions.org/zerocarbonplan
Posted by Eclipse Now, Sunday, 19 July 2009 12:20:55 PM
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E.N.

Just love your enthusiasm - ever thought of bottling and marketing it? I will check out your link, although (and I am no luddite just impoverished) I do not have an Ipod, but use my software equivalent on my PC to listen into as many science programs as I can find time and concentration for.

I don't think we will ween ourselves off F/fuels in ten years - BUT we will become energy self-sufficient, mainly because we will have little choice (and the powers-that-be will finally see there are dollars to be made). A shame we humans need to be hit over the head, before investing in helmuts. However, I remain an optimist because the alternative is untenable.

Cheers
Posted by Fractelle, Sunday, 19 July 2009 12:52:50 PM
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