Post-human Earth: How the planet will recover from us - environment

[Link: New Scientist] "Not so, says James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He argues that past episodes are a poor guide to what will happen in the future, for the simple reason that the sun is brighter now than it was then. Add that to the mix and the release of methane hydrates could lead to catastrophic, unstoppable global warming - a so-called 'Venus syndrome' that causes the oceans to boil away and dooms the Earth to the fate of its broiling neighbour."

Most conversations about Climate Change focus on the short term. What will the weather be like around here as Global Warming kicks in? This article is grappling with the bigger picture. As we pour CO2 into the atmosphere by burning hydrocarbons, we are returning the earth to a state that hasn't been seen for millions of years. Who knows what will happen as this occurs? All of earth's systems will be effected. Much of the earth may well become uninhabitable. The good news is that we will run out of hydrocarbons to burn eventually and we won't be able to add CO2 to the atmosphere. The bad news is that when we run out of hydrocarbons to burn we will also be out of energy needed to combat the changing conditions.

Birth control could head off climate crunch

[Link: Reuters] Birth control and new technologies -- not lifestyle change alone -- may be needed to head off a combined climate, food and energy crunch later this century, said the head of Britain's science academy Martin Rees.

It is amazing how we can't talk about population control. I really don't think we will ever find a way to do it either. We are programmed to reproduce just like we are programmed to breath air, and limiting reproduction is an ultimate threat. But that doen't change the fact that there will soon be more of us than there are resources to support us. Population that we can't control will be controlled by natural processes and natural population processes are generally not very pretty.

Solar industry's promises bring environmental challenges for Tennessee

Solar industry's promises bring environmental challenges for Tennessee: "As the state tries to reap the benefits of a growing solar industry that could bring thousands of new jobs and billions in new investment, the massive projects also bring with them environmental challenges in the form of intensive manufacturing operations that will draw a tremendous amount of electricity from the state's power grid used to run sprawling chemical reactors.

With just two investments — Hemlock Semiconductor Group near Clarksville and a similar Wacker Chemie AG plant near Chattanooga — Tennessee is poised to become a nationwide leader in the production of polysilicon crystals, the basic building block for the solar industry. Together, these plants will cost at least $2.2 billion to construct."

Solar might be replacing hydrocarbon use in other states, but in Tennessee it looks like more of a tossup. Maybe solar power might have a little bigger "footprint" than most of us imagine.

On American Sustainability - Anatomy of Societal Collapse (Summary)

[Link: The Oil Drum]

"As the historically abundant and cheap resources upon which our American way of life depends become increasingly scarce and expensive, a scenario that is already in process, the total level of natural resources and derived goods and services available for our consumption will decline dramatically, as must some combination of our population level and material living standards.

Absent immediate fundamental changes to both our distorted worldview and our dysfunctional resource utilization behavior, American society will collapse—not in 1000 years, or 500 years, or even 50 years; but almost certainly within 25 years. America, as we know it, will cease to exist well before the year 2050."

This article makes a strong statement about the true consequences of the sustainability quandary. Sustainability is not a direction of travel but rather a destination. As children of the age of growth, if we think about limits at all, we tend to think about ceilings. How much is too much? As a society that is living far beyond its means, however, we should be thinking about floors. How far do we have to fall?

All of the trappings of a modern, industrial society are interrelated. Both our products and our means of production are fed by unsustainable resource consumption. Somehow we will have to learn to produce sustainable products using sustainable production methods with sustainable sources of power if we are to maintain a functioning sustainable society. In addition we will probably have to figure out how to limit our actual numbers. None of this is a likely result, if we wait until the unsustainable resources are gone, or even until society realizes that they eventually will be gone.

All of this seems somewhat obvious to me. And yet, honestly, I cannot find a way to drop my lifelong habits and move towards a non-consumptive, or even lower consumption existence. The built in prejudices from living my life in a powerful, industrial society are difficult to ignore. For the vast majority of people even the concept of limits is still impossible to embrace. I think the author is right, the inevitable readjustment we are facing will, almost certainly, come as a surprise and we will probably never know what hit us.

Peak Oil: Global Oil Production’s Peaked, Analyst Says

[Link: WSJ]

"non-OPEC oil production apparently peaked in the first quarter of 2007, and given precipitous falls in oil output from Russia to Mexico, there’s not much hope for a recovery. OPEC production—and thus global output—peaked a little later, in the first quarter of 2008."

We are growing complacent about the resource situation, particularly oil. The disastrous economic situation and resultant collapse of oil prices has led us to believe that there is no longer an oil supply problem. It was all just another speculative investment bubble you see. But Peak Oil doesn't work that way. We aren't using as much oil as we did but we are still using a lot of oil. All we have done is take the pressure off of the suppliers and when demand firms up again we are right back in the thick of it.
This article from the Wall Street Journal says we have already slipped over the peak and when recovery comes we will be already on the downward slope. Trying to grow with a shrinking energy supply. It isn't going to be pretty.

Obama Overturns War on Science

[Link: Rolling Stone : National Affairs Daily]

"I am also signing a Presidential Memorandum directing the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop a strategy for restoring scientific integrity to government decision making. To ensure that in this new Administration, we base our public policies on the soundest science; that we appoint scientific advisors based on their credentials and experience, not their politics or ideology; and that we are open and honest with the American people about the science behind our decisions."

This is very good news from the Obama Administration. For too long Science has been relegated to the status of "just another bit of noise in the political spectrum" by commentators whose opinions don't stand up to formal scientific scrutiny. If we are ever to protect ourselves from the energy/climate double whammy that is approaching us, we are going to need the assistance of unbiased scientific analysis.

Carbon dioxide emissions could last millenniums

[Link: McClatchy Washington Bureau]

"Ultimately, the amount of fossil fuel available could be enough to raise the atmospheric CO2 concentration higher than it has been in millions of years,"

Most of us are still thinking of climate change like we think of other natural disasters such as earthquakes, tornados and floods. They come, we recover and adjust, then things return to normal. As this article attests, Climate Change is not that kind of disaster. For all intents and purposes, Climate Change is forever. We have loaded up the atmosphere with carbon compounds that have been locked away in the earth's crust for hundreds of millions of years and that carbon is not going to go away quickly.

We have essentially done two permanent things. We have used up a significant portion of the irreplaceable hydrocarbon supply that we once had available, most of the easy supply in fact, and we have used it in such a way that the atmosphere has been drastically modified for the foreseeable future. These two effects now define the new world that we are living in and will be living in from now on.

We are far from accepting this new reality. Society works in slow motion even when things are obvious so a slowly evolving, ill-defined new reality isn't likely to get a quick response. As the consequences of these effects (reduced energy supply and more extreme weather) become apparent we will, of course, have to deal with them but we really should begin to prepare now. The longer we wait the harder it will become.