The two-part interview which I did with Alex Smith of Radio Ecoshock is now available. In lieu of a regular post this week, I've decided to link to that interview. Part 1 is about navigating collapse. In Part 2 I discuss the scale and rate-of-conversion problems with alternative energy and touch on climate change.
Part 1 - Navigating Collapse: Alex Smith interviews Kurt Cobb (23 minutes)
A Lo-Fi version of Part 1 is also available.
Part 2 - Alternative Energy & Climate Change: Alex Smith interviews Kurt Cobb (27 minutes)
A Lo-Fi version of Part 2 is also available.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Will enhanced oil recovery be an oil supply savior?
My latest column on Scitizen entitled "Will Enhanced Oil Recovery Be An Oil Supply Savior?" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:
Oil supply optimists often say that the application of enhanced oil recovery techniques to existing and future wells will vastly expand oil reserves and oil production. The trouble is these techniques aren't new, and they are already being widely applied. That means current oil reserves and production already reflect any effect they have had....Read more
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Perry Mason and the climate change deniers
The fossil fuel lobby knows that much of the public's worldview is shaped by television, and television is filled with courtroom dramas. The vast majority of those dramas, however, are about criminal cases, not civil cases. (I'll come back to this difference later.)
Climate change activist and 350.org founder Bill McKibben alluded to this in a recent piece appearing on "The Huffington Post." But America's and perhaps the world's love affair with defense attorneys whose clients seem to have no chance whatsoever of an acquittal goes back much further than the O. J. Simpson murder trial which McKibben mentions.
Perhaps the best but certainly not the earliest example of the perpetual underdog defense attorney is Perry Mason, the main character of the eponymous television drama. Mason's fictional clients almost uniformly have the means, the motive and the opportunity to commit murder. And just as uniformly, Mason would unmask the real killer, often through clever cross-examination that exonerated his client. Combine this with the number of times television audiences have heard television judges explain to television juries that in order to convict they must find a defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and you get a public primed to accept that any doubt is sufficient for acquittal.
The fossil fuel lobby has used this persistent and decades-long instruction to good effect. Most fossil fuel industry propagandists no longer claim there is no climate change since this position has become untenable in the face of overwhelming evidence. Instead, like Mason they point the finger at so-called "natural" warming as the true murderer of climate stability. They do not present any evidence of their own because they have none. (All their money is spent on propaganda.) They merely cite research from bona fide climate scientists which documents previous periods of climate change unrelated to human activity. This, of course, proves nothing.
But it does set the stage for the second tactic, which is to focus on ambiguities and uncertainties in climate science. What the propagandists claim is that these ambiguities and uncertainties, which are a part of any scientific endeavor, are reason enough for an acquittal. Remember: By the standards of a criminal trial any reasonable doubt means the defendant should go free. It does not mean the defendant didn't commit the crime, only that the evidence is not sufficient to convict him or her.
This standard, however, was designed for individuals on trial for crimes. And, whatever one thinks of the actions of fossil fuel companies, their activities are not considered crimes under the law. If they were, we would all be implicated in those crimes since virtually every person on the planet uses some form of fossil fuel energy. But there is another standard upon which we make all sorts of decisions, not just legal ones, every day. That standard is called preponderance of the evidence. What it means is that evidence is weighed based on not just the amount of evidence on each side of an issue, but also the soundness of that evidence and the conclusions that can be drawn from it. It is how we ought to make public policy, and sometimes we actually do.
But the public is little aware of this standard. One reason is that television and movie dramas very rarely revolve around civil litigation for which the standard of proof is the preponderance of the evidence. This is because real civil litigation is almost always deadly dull. And, in those few dramas that do involve civil litigation such as A Civil Action and Erin Brockovitch, almost all the action takes place outside the courtroom. That's because the courtroom action behind these real-life dramas would include the endless, tedious questioning of experts painstakingly trying to explain highly complex technical and scientific information to a jury or a judge. Filmmakers and directors know that nobody would watch such a thing as entertainment.
If the climate change issue were litigated as a civil case--what a minute, it already has been! The results have been what one would actually expect in civil cases where virtually all the scientific evidence comes down on one side: namely, that climate change is real and that humans are the major cause of it. Based on that evidence the U. S. Supreme Court decided that the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wrongly refused to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as pollutants when it was petitioned to do so. The EPA is now preparing to do what the Supreme Court told it to do in 2007. In a related case, the Export-Import Bank of the United States and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, two agencies of the U. S. government, were forced to begin evaluating the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions related to the projects they fund, establish an overall policy concerning climate change, and fund $500 million of renewable energy projects.
Other suits are getting started, and it is hard to say whether courts will allow individuals or groups to sue greenhouse gas emitters for damages. The questions so far have been 1) whether such litigants have standing to sue and 2) whether the court could proceed without guidance from the U. S. Congress about how to handle such cases. But where the question has been whether climate change is real and humans are responsible, government agencies have so far been forced to move ahead with new regulation and policy by the courts--courts that have been convinced by the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence presented in civil lawsuits.
So, we have a precedent for how climate change policy should be determined, not by the bogus logic that any hint of uncertainty in any of the climate science should be grounds for doing nothing, but rather that the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence demonstrating the human link to climate change should frame our actions.
Climate change activists are foolish from a rhetorical point of view to respond to every discrete piece of disinformation spread by the fossil fuel lobby and its legion of paid publicists and unpaid dupes. This just reinforces the idea that the standard for public policy ought to be one of beyond a reasonable doubt. By that standard we would never regulate anything. Instead, climate change activists need to focus on the overwhelming case for human-induced climate change and advance that as succinctly and clearly as they can. And, they need to put Perry Mason and his like back where they belong, on television and in movies and banished from the realm climate change policy.
P.S. If the climate change deniers continue to insist on using beyond a reasonable doubt as their standard, perhaps we should require that they apply this standard to the fossil fuel industry itself. The industry should be required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that greenhouse gas emissions will NOT alter the climate. If it cannot, then by that standard the industry should be forced to cease extracting and burning all fossil fuels. Standards can be a double-edged sword. Be careful what you wish for.
Climate change activist and 350.org founder Bill McKibben alluded to this in a recent piece appearing on "The Huffington Post." But America's and perhaps the world's love affair with defense attorneys whose clients seem to have no chance whatsoever of an acquittal goes back much further than the O. J. Simpson murder trial which McKibben mentions.
Perhaps the best but certainly not the earliest example of the perpetual underdog defense attorney is Perry Mason, the main character of the eponymous television drama. Mason's fictional clients almost uniformly have the means, the motive and the opportunity to commit murder. And just as uniformly, Mason would unmask the real killer, often through clever cross-examination that exonerated his client. Combine this with the number of times television audiences have heard television judges explain to television juries that in order to convict they must find a defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and you get a public primed to accept that any doubt is sufficient for acquittal.
The fossil fuel lobby has used this persistent and decades-long instruction to good effect. Most fossil fuel industry propagandists no longer claim there is no climate change since this position has become untenable in the face of overwhelming evidence. Instead, like Mason they point the finger at so-called "natural" warming as the true murderer of climate stability. They do not present any evidence of their own because they have none. (All their money is spent on propaganda.) They merely cite research from bona fide climate scientists which documents previous periods of climate change unrelated to human activity. This, of course, proves nothing.
But it does set the stage for the second tactic, which is to focus on ambiguities and uncertainties in climate science. What the propagandists claim is that these ambiguities and uncertainties, which are a part of any scientific endeavor, are reason enough for an acquittal. Remember: By the standards of a criminal trial any reasonable doubt means the defendant should go free. It does not mean the defendant didn't commit the crime, only that the evidence is not sufficient to convict him or her.
This standard, however, was designed for individuals on trial for crimes. And, whatever one thinks of the actions of fossil fuel companies, their activities are not considered crimes under the law. If they were, we would all be implicated in those crimes since virtually every person on the planet uses some form of fossil fuel energy. But there is another standard upon which we make all sorts of decisions, not just legal ones, every day. That standard is called preponderance of the evidence. What it means is that evidence is weighed based on not just the amount of evidence on each side of an issue, but also the soundness of that evidence and the conclusions that can be drawn from it. It is how we ought to make public policy, and sometimes we actually do.
But the public is little aware of this standard. One reason is that television and movie dramas very rarely revolve around civil litigation for which the standard of proof is the preponderance of the evidence. This is because real civil litigation is almost always deadly dull. And, in those few dramas that do involve civil litigation such as A Civil Action and Erin Brockovitch, almost all the action takes place outside the courtroom. That's because the courtroom action behind these real-life dramas would include the endless, tedious questioning of experts painstakingly trying to explain highly complex technical and scientific information to a jury or a judge. Filmmakers and directors know that nobody would watch such a thing as entertainment.
If the climate change issue were litigated as a civil case--what a minute, it already has been! The results have been what one would actually expect in civil cases where virtually all the scientific evidence comes down on one side: namely, that climate change is real and that humans are the major cause of it. Based on that evidence the U. S. Supreme Court decided that the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wrongly refused to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as pollutants when it was petitioned to do so. The EPA is now preparing to do what the Supreme Court told it to do in 2007. In a related case, the Export-Import Bank of the United States and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, two agencies of the U. S. government, were forced to begin evaluating the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions related to the projects they fund, establish an overall policy concerning climate change, and fund $500 million of renewable energy projects.
Other suits are getting started, and it is hard to say whether courts will allow individuals or groups to sue greenhouse gas emitters for damages. The questions so far have been 1) whether such litigants have standing to sue and 2) whether the court could proceed without guidance from the U. S. Congress about how to handle such cases. But where the question has been whether climate change is real and humans are responsible, government agencies have so far been forced to move ahead with new regulation and policy by the courts--courts that have been convinced by the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence presented in civil lawsuits.
So, we have a precedent for how climate change policy should be determined, not by the bogus logic that any hint of uncertainty in any of the climate science should be grounds for doing nothing, but rather that the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence demonstrating the human link to climate change should frame our actions.
Climate change activists are foolish from a rhetorical point of view to respond to every discrete piece of disinformation spread by the fossil fuel lobby and its legion of paid publicists and unpaid dupes. This just reinforces the idea that the standard for public policy ought to be one of beyond a reasonable doubt. By that standard we would never regulate anything. Instead, climate change activists need to focus on the overwhelming case for human-induced climate change and advance that as succinctly and clearly as they can. And, they need to put Perry Mason and his like back where they belong, on television and in movies and banished from the realm climate change policy.
P.S. If the climate change deniers continue to insist on using beyond a reasonable doubt as their standard, perhaps we should require that they apply this standard to the fossil fuel industry itself. The industry should be required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that greenhouse gas emissions will NOT alter the climate. If it cannot, then by that standard the industry should be forced to cease extracting and burning all fossil fuels. Standards can be a double-edged sword. Be careful what you wish for.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Regrettably, A Comments Policy
The vast majority of comments on Resource Insights come from thoughtful people trying to advance our understanding of resources, climate change and sustainability. I thank them for helping me and my readers expand our awareness of these critical issues, and I invite them to continue our journey together.
Some recent comments on this blog, however, have prompted me to institute a comments policy. Previously, the only comments which I deleted were either spam, direct attacks on individuals, or in some way clearly abusive. But now I feel compelled to respond to those who want to use this blog as a depot for disinformation generated by the fossil fuel lobby. Frankly, it is a waste of my time on this blog to refute disinformation about basic climate science. I will no longer do so. Instead, comments which in my judgment are merely designed to be conduits for disinformation about climate science or about any other topic will be deleted. I encourage other commenters to ignore such comments as well. I don't want you wasting your time either.
If you are a reader and have questions about basic climate science, there are many excellent websites and publications which can answer your questions. The single best book I've read for those who want a basic comprehensive briefing on climate science is John Houghton's (somewhat pricey) book entitled "Global Warming: The Complete Briefing." Another excellent and highly readable book is Tim Flannery's (quite affordable) "The Weather Makers." You'll find Houghton's book in many university libraries. Flannery's book is probably available in your public library. And, online I can recommend RealClimate, a blog written by bona fide climate scientists.
The Internet is a wonderful place that allows everyone to have his or her say. If you want to dispute basic climate science, I encourage you to start your own blog or website or to post on those that specialize in industry-funded propaganda.
Some recent comments on this blog, however, have prompted me to institute a comments policy. Previously, the only comments which I deleted were either spam, direct attacks on individuals, or in some way clearly abusive. But now I feel compelled to respond to those who want to use this blog as a depot for disinformation generated by the fossil fuel lobby. Frankly, it is a waste of my time on this blog to refute disinformation about basic climate science. I will no longer do so. Instead, comments which in my judgment are merely designed to be conduits for disinformation about climate science or about any other topic will be deleted. I encourage other commenters to ignore such comments as well. I don't want you wasting your time either.
If you are a reader and have questions about basic climate science, there are many excellent websites and publications which can answer your questions. The single best book I've read for those who want a basic comprehensive briefing on climate science is John Houghton's (somewhat pricey) book entitled "Global Warming: The Complete Briefing." Another excellent and highly readable book is Tim Flannery's (quite affordable) "The Weather Makers." You'll find Houghton's book in many university libraries. Flannery's book is probably available in your public library. And, online I can recommend RealClimate, a blog written by bona fide climate scientists.
The Internet is a wonderful place that allows everyone to have his or her say. If you want to dispute basic climate science, I encourage you to start your own blog or website or to post on those that specialize in industry-funded propaganda.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Ocean acidification: Why the climate change deniers don't want to talk about it
Most people know that the release of carbon dioxide into the air from human sources has contributed to rising global temperatures and massive increases in the rate of melting of the ice at the poles and on Greenland. One of the major consequences they may not know about is the acidification of the oceans.
The chemistry is quite straightforward. It's the same process that occurs when bottled water is carbonated. Most of the carbon dioxide simply dissolves in the water. But some of it reacts with the water to form carbonic acid. And, that's what's happening in the world's oceans as humans release more and more carbon dioxide into the air.
Climate change deniers love to dispute climate modeling, to talk about short-term weather phenomena, and to pick on minor citation errors in official reports. But, they don't like to talk about ocean acidification for three interrelated reasons. First, humans have indisputably been dumping exponentially increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from the beginning of the industrial revolution, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels. Second, the oceans have absorbed about one-third of this carbon dioxide which then forms carbonic acid. This reduces the pH of the water in an acidic direction. Third, scientists have documented through direct observation the changes in ocean species, both large and microscopic, that have resulted from this increased acidity.
What the scientists are finding is troubling. First, the entire food chain of the ocean could be short-circuited. Second, ocean acidification in combination with other human impacts on the ocean could result in mass extinctions. Third, no one knows how such changes might affect life on land which is by no means isolated from the ocean.
Among those who accept the science of climate change, there are some who believe we can engineer our way out of the problem. One proposal calls for putting small reflective particles into the atmosphere to block a portion of the sunlight falling on the earth. But a recent study revealed that this would have little or no effect on the continuing acidification of the oceans.
Even though 1) the mechanism for ocean acidification is well-established, 2) the source of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and consequently in the ocean is traceable to man-made causes, and 3) the effects are already being observed--they are no mere projections--the climate change deniers will no doubt tell us that ocean acidification is nothing to worry about. Of course, we must remember that they are in the pay of or under the influence of propaganda put out by the fossil fuel interests, interests that spend millions on disinformation and zero on ocean research.
These same climate change deniers insure their houses against fire, their cars against accident and their bodies against illness. But they want us to play Russian roulette with the oceans and the climate. They cannot possibly know how the future will turn out. But even if climate change were not an issue, the peril associated with the acidification of the oceans by itself would justify immediate and drastic action to curb carbon dioxide emissions.
It is hard to imagine a case weaker than that made by the deniers against the science of human-caused global climate change. But there is one, the nonexistent case against the reality of human-caused ocean acidification. So, it's no wonder the climate change deniers don't want to talk about it.
The chemistry is quite straightforward. It's the same process that occurs when bottled water is carbonated. Most of the carbon dioxide simply dissolves in the water. But some of it reacts with the water to form carbonic acid. And, that's what's happening in the world's oceans as humans release more and more carbon dioxide into the air.
Climate change deniers love to dispute climate modeling, to talk about short-term weather phenomena, and to pick on minor citation errors in official reports. But, they don't like to talk about ocean acidification for three interrelated reasons. First, humans have indisputably been dumping exponentially increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from the beginning of the industrial revolution, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels. Second, the oceans have absorbed about one-third of this carbon dioxide which then forms carbonic acid. This reduces the pH of the water in an acidic direction. Third, scientists have documented through direct observation the changes in ocean species, both large and microscopic, that have resulted from this increased acidity.
What the scientists are finding is troubling. First, the entire food chain of the ocean could be short-circuited. Second, ocean acidification in combination with other human impacts on the ocean could result in mass extinctions. Third, no one knows how such changes might affect life on land which is by no means isolated from the ocean.
Among those who accept the science of climate change, there are some who believe we can engineer our way out of the problem. One proposal calls for putting small reflective particles into the atmosphere to block a portion of the sunlight falling on the earth. But a recent study revealed that this would have little or no effect on the continuing acidification of the oceans.
Even though 1) the mechanism for ocean acidification is well-established, 2) the source of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and consequently in the ocean is traceable to man-made causes, and 3) the effects are already being observed--they are no mere projections--the climate change deniers will no doubt tell us that ocean acidification is nothing to worry about. Of course, we must remember that they are in the pay of or under the influence of propaganda put out by the fossil fuel interests, interests that spend millions on disinformation and zero on ocean research.
These same climate change deniers insure their houses against fire, their cars against accident and their bodies against illness. But they want us to play Russian roulette with the oceans and the climate. They cannot possibly know how the future will turn out. But even if climate change were not an issue, the peril associated with the acidification of the oceans by itself would justify immediate and drastic action to curb carbon dioxide emissions.
It is hard to imagine a case weaker than that made by the deniers against the science of human-caused global climate change. But there is one, the nonexistent case against the reality of human-caused ocean acidification. So, it's no wonder the climate change deniers don't want to talk about it.
Sunday, March 07, 2010
No post this week
I am concentrating on editing a book manuscript this week and will post again on Sunday, March 14.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
An uneven collapse (Hint: It's already happening)
When we think of collapse, we often think of a building or bridge or other structure suddenly giving way. We have a tendency to take this physical model of collapse and translate it into the social and political world.
Thus, when Joseph Tainter or Jared Diamond write of societal collapse, we are inclined to think of a relatively rapid process that acts equally across an entire area and even perhaps across the entire globe. But I believe that the collapse of the globalized society we now inhabit will be exceedingly uneven geographically and one that is spread over many years. And, I believe that that collapse has already started to appear in places which might be considered the periphery of our global system.
My index of collapse in this case will be reasonably objective: When population in a country or region declines persistently and the main cause is not a voluntary decline in birth rates, but a persistent rise in death rates, then collapse has been confirmed. Notice I didn't say "collapse has begun" for the engines of collapse are set in motion long before such demographic proof shows up.
Exhibit number one is Russia which has had a persistently declining population since 1991 when population was close to 149 million versus just under 142 million today. A broad range of factors are said to explain this decline. But despite the slight uptick in population this year, few experts expect the trend to be reversed. Russia may be a foretaste of how such a decline might be experienced elsewhere in the world once it arrives.
The reason the Russians have a head start is that their fall from Joseph Tainter's perilous tightrope of complexity began in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, an event that continues to rain its cataclysmic consequences down on the Russian Federation and all the former Soviet republics that are now independent countries.
One key element has been the collapse of the public health system in Russia. AIDS is racing through the population and tuberculosis has resurrected as a major killer. Certainly, the famously low Russian birth rate has something to do with the decline in population. But that rate was already low before the Soviet Union collapsed. It has declined since then as the life chances that Russians perceive for themselves and their children continue to darken. Death rates meanwhile have shot through the roof, up 40 percent since 1992.
Surely, a country as rich in natural resources as Russia should be able to turn things around, especially since a strong central government (some say too strong) has been re-established under the leadership of Vladimir Putin. But such has not been the case. And, the Russian example shows that once collapse begins it tends to be self-reinforcing. More deaths and fewer births now lead to more deaths and fewer births in the future as the cohort of women able to reproduce shrinks and as the capability of the country to respond to the crisis shrinks with the declining population. And, remember, this is all happening in a country in which health care is provided to all people by the state and which has had one of the best educational systems in the world, at least until now. And, it's happening inside the world's leading exporter of oil, revenues from which have been swelling state coffers in recent years.
Perhaps you will say that Russia's situation is unique. But other parts of the former Soviet empire are also experiencing significant population declines. Ukraine suffers from similarly high death rates due to AIDS, alcoholism and smoking. Many parts of the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc are facing both declining births and rising death rates, the latter a sign that public health systems are inadequate to handle the problems they face. (See several of them in this table.)
But these countries have had histories of low birth rates. What about countries with historically high birth rates? There too we find a cluster of countries in southern Africa that are suffering heavily from an out-of-control AIDS epidemic. South Africa, Lesotho and Namibia appear to be on a trajectory toward population decline despite their high birth rates as their death rates spiral upward.
This cannot simply be put down to AIDS. There are AIDS sufferers in many countries. But wealthy countries such as the United States have spent considerable resources to keep a lid on AIDS infections. In some of those countries AIDS has even become a managed chronic condition rather than an automatic death sentence.
Resources, financial and otherwise, then must be the key. In a world of shrinking resources, especially shrinking energy resources, we will have less wealth to spend on the multiple threats to our complex global society such as climate change, epidemics and depletion of fisheries, forests, water, soil and minerals.
The first stage of collapse, Dmitri Orlov tells us, is financial collapse. We have just witnessed the most colossal financial collapse since the Great Depression. And, despite protestations to the contrary, we are following very closely the script of the last depression. (Both then and now markets rose about 60 percent from the bottom of the crash and experts everywhere were claiming that the worst was over.) The financial collapse is followed by a commercial collapse, i.e. an economic collapse in which businesses continue to fail and unemployment continues to rise.
These collapses cut revenues to local, state and central governments and force cuts in services that are critical to the health and nutrition of the population. It will likely be a long time before the average American or average Western European enjoys the same health as the average Russian or South African does today. But the wheels are in motion to undermine the very supports critical to public health even in wealthy societies. And, if economic stagnation or decline persists, the decline in income and employment among the middle and lower classes will inevitably lead to inferior diets and health care. Already many people in the United States are about to lose their unemployment benefits and many others who have reached time limits for public assistance must now sell their food stamps to pay their bills.
Today, the world's wealthy countries still enjoy several advantages in the collapse game. Many have large tracts of excellent and highly productive farmland. Some like the United States, Canada and Australia have extensive energy and mineral resources left. Circumstances that force wealthy countries back on their own resources would be traumatic, but not as traumatic as what's in store for many of the world's poor countries, the resources of which have been transferred over many years at bargain prices to the wealthy countries. Those countries poor in resources and lacking well-developed public health and other administrative systems will certainly collapse first.
Now, collapse doesn't mean annihilation. In Tainter's view it means returning to a less complex society. Complex, large-scale systems would be abandoned because they are no longer effective in the face of new realities. It would be wise to begin building the replacements for those systems before they collapse. To a certain extent the local food movement is doing just that. But to build a truly resilient society there are so many other areas that require our attention--health care, education, manufacturing, transportation, communication, and the arts to name a few. And, even though those of us in wealthy countries will have some extra time to prepare, we will be doing so against a backdrop of increasing chaos and decline which will be made all the worse by the failure of governing elites to correctly diagnose our situation.
Thus, when Joseph Tainter or Jared Diamond write of societal collapse, we are inclined to think of a relatively rapid process that acts equally across an entire area and even perhaps across the entire globe. But I believe that the collapse of the globalized society we now inhabit will be exceedingly uneven geographically and one that is spread over many years. And, I believe that that collapse has already started to appear in places which might be considered the periphery of our global system.
My index of collapse in this case will be reasonably objective: When population in a country or region declines persistently and the main cause is not a voluntary decline in birth rates, but a persistent rise in death rates, then collapse has been confirmed. Notice I didn't say "collapse has begun" for the engines of collapse are set in motion long before such demographic proof shows up.
Exhibit number one is Russia which has had a persistently declining population since 1991 when population was close to 149 million versus just under 142 million today. A broad range of factors are said to explain this decline. But despite the slight uptick in population this year, few experts expect the trend to be reversed. Russia may be a foretaste of how such a decline might be experienced elsewhere in the world once it arrives.
The reason the Russians have a head start is that their fall from Joseph Tainter's perilous tightrope of complexity began in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, an event that continues to rain its cataclysmic consequences down on the Russian Federation and all the former Soviet republics that are now independent countries.
One key element has been the collapse of the public health system in Russia. AIDS is racing through the population and tuberculosis has resurrected as a major killer. Certainly, the famously low Russian birth rate has something to do with the decline in population. But that rate was already low before the Soviet Union collapsed. It has declined since then as the life chances that Russians perceive for themselves and their children continue to darken. Death rates meanwhile have shot through the roof, up 40 percent since 1992.
Surely, a country as rich in natural resources as Russia should be able to turn things around, especially since a strong central government (some say too strong) has been re-established under the leadership of Vladimir Putin. But such has not been the case. And, the Russian example shows that once collapse begins it tends to be self-reinforcing. More deaths and fewer births now lead to more deaths and fewer births in the future as the cohort of women able to reproduce shrinks and as the capability of the country to respond to the crisis shrinks with the declining population. And, remember, this is all happening in a country in which health care is provided to all people by the state and which has had one of the best educational systems in the world, at least until now. And, it's happening inside the world's leading exporter of oil, revenues from which have been swelling state coffers in recent years.
Perhaps you will say that Russia's situation is unique. But other parts of the former Soviet empire are also experiencing significant population declines. Ukraine suffers from similarly high death rates due to AIDS, alcoholism and smoking. Many parts of the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc are facing both declining births and rising death rates, the latter a sign that public health systems are inadequate to handle the problems they face. (See several of them in this table.)
But these countries have had histories of low birth rates. What about countries with historically high birth rates? There too we find a cluster of countries in southern Africa that are suffering heavily from an out-of-control AIDS epidemic. South Africa, Lesotho and Namibia appear to be on a trajectory toward population decline despite their high birth rates as their death rates spiral upward.
This cannot simply be put down to AIDS. There are AIDS sufferers in many countries. But wealthy countries such as the United States have spent considerable resources to keep a lid on AIDS infections. In some of those countries AIDS has even become a managed chronic condition rather than an automatic death sentence.
Resources, financial and otherwise, then must be the key. In a world of shrinking resources, especially shrinking energy resources, we will have less wealth to spend on the multiple threats to our complex global society such as climate change, epidemics and depletion of fisheries, forests, water, soil and minerals.
The first stage of collapse, Dmitri Orlov tells us, is financial collapse. We have just witnessed the most colossal financial collapse since the Great Depression. And, despite protestations to the contrary, we are following very closely the script of the last depression. (Both then and now markets rose about 60 percent from the bottom of the crash and experts everywhere were claiming that the worst was over.) The financial collapse is followed by a commercial collapse, i.e. an economic collapse in which businesses continue to fail and unemployment continues to rise.
These collapses cut revenues to local, state and central governments and force cuts in services that are critical to the health and nutrition of the population. It will likely be a long time before the average American or average Western European enjoys the same health as the average Russian or South African does today. But the wheels are in motion to undermine the very supports critical to public health even in wealthy societies. And, if economic stagnation or decline persists, the decline in income and employment among the middle and lower classes will inevitably lead to inferior diets and health care. Already many people in the United States are about to lose their unemployment benefits and many others who have reached time limits for public assistance must now sell their food stamps to pay their bills.
Today, the world's wealthy countries still enjoy several advantages in the collapse game. Many have large tracts of excellent and highly productive farmland. Some like the United States, Canada and Australia have extensive energy and mineral resources left. Circumstances that force wealthy countries back on their own resources would be traumatic, but not as traumatic as what's in store for many of the world's poor countries, the resources of which have been transferred over many years at bargain prices to the wealthy countries. Those countries poor in resources and lacking well-developed public health and other administrative systems will certainly collapse first.
Now, collapse doesn't mean annihilation. In Tainter's view it means returning to a less complex society. Complex, large-scale systems would be abandoned because they are no longer effective in the face of new realities. It would be wise to begin building the replacements for those systems before they collapse. To a certain extent the local food movement is doing just that. But to build a truly resilient society there are so many other areas that require our attention--health care, education, manufacturing, transportation, communication, and the arts to name a few. And, even though those of us in wealthy countries will have some extra time to prepare, we will be doing so against a backdrop of increasing chaos and decline which will be made all the worse by the failure of governing elites to correctly diagnose our situation.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Do Texas and the North Sea foretell the future of oil production?
My latest column on Scitizen entitled "Do Texas and the North Sea Foretell the Future of Oil Production?" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:
Oil supply optimists claim that new technology combined with private development of the world's remaining oil resources--most of which are now under the control of government-owned companies--would vastly increase global oil production and put off any decline for decades. Texas oilman Jeffrey Brown isn't buying it, and he cites the history of oil production in Texas and the North Sea to explain why....Read more
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Peak demand: The cornucopians reach for a fig leaf
The world's oil supply optimists must feel as if they are in that dream that so many of us have had about arriving at work in our underwear. Oops! What do I do now to save face?
Over the past decade oil optimists repeatedly forecast a glut in oil supplies that kept failing to materialize. Now, they are reaching for a fig leaf hoping no one will remember their consistently errant predictions. That fig leaf is the idea that we have reached peak demand, and that that's the reason we have not seen oil production rise in the past several years.
Strangely, they made no mention of this theory in 2005, 2006, 2007 or 2008 as prices skyrocketed. It was only after the market crashed and a deep worldwide recession ensued--something which would be expected to curtail oil demand--that they formulated the peak demand thesis.
Archcornucopian Daniel Yergin, who kept calling for mushrooming oil supplies throughout the last decade, now tells us that flat production is really the consequence of peak oil demand. Developed nations will from this day forward require no greater quantities of oil. He does acknowledge that demand may grow in China in the years to come. His firm, Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), is on record suggesting that oil production capacity will likely grow 25 percent from now through 2030. But the forecast is later hedged with this statement:
Over the past decade oil optimists repeatedly forecast a glut in oil supplies that kept failing to materialize. Now, they are reaching for a fig leaf hoping no one will remember their consistently errant predictions. That fig leaf is the idea that we have reached peak demand, and that that's the reason we have not seen oil production rise in the past several years.
Strangely, they made no mention of this theory in 2005, 2006, 2007 or 2008 as prices skyrocketed. It was only after the market crashed and a deep worldwide recession ensued--something which would be expected to curtail oil demand--that they formulated the peak demand thesis.
Archcornucopian Daniel Yergin, who kept calling for mushrooming oil supplies throughout the last decade, now tells us that flat production is really the consequence of peak oil demand. Developed nations will from this day forward require no greater quantities of oil. He does acknowledge that demand may grow in China in the years to come. His firm, Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), is on record suggesting that oil production capacity will likely grow 25 percent from now through 2030. But the forecast is later hedged with this statement:
“So much will happen between now and 2030 to affect demand—from changes in the automobile engine and the electric battery to changes in demographics and values,” says [CERA senior director Peter] Jackson. “Peak demand may ultimately prove to be the main driver of long-term supply.”
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has also jumped on the peak demand bandwagon. Fatih Birol, chief economist for the IEA, told Reuters, "When we look at the OECD countries--the U.S., Europe and Japan--I think the level of demand that we have seen in 2006 and 2007, we will never see again." To be fair Birol has been sounding the alarm about oil dependence and suggesting that the world "leave oil before it leaves us." And, he has indicated that peak might come as early as 2020. Perhaps Birol is hedging his bets even further sensing that production may rise little if any from here.
A recent entrant into the peak demand sweepstakes is Saudi Arabia. Always publicly confident about its ability to produce vastly more oil for decades to come, it is noteworthy that the desert kingdom is now announcing that peak demand may be here. This comes not too long after the country announced plans to use carbon dioxide injection in the world's most prolific oilfield, Ghawar. The Saudis insist they are doing this as a public service to help spread the technology of carbon sequestration. But this type of injection is only used in fields that are in decline and for which other methods such as waterflooding are no longer sufficient to maintain production. If world demand can be said to have peaked, then perhaps the Saudis will have a perpetual excuse for why they aren't producing more oil--not because they can't, but because the world doesn't demand it.
One has only to make a superficial analysis of such claims to see that they amount to nothing more than sleight of hand. First, every economist knows that supply and demand are always equal and that it is price that makes them so. Ergo, technically speaking if demand has peaked so has supply. It is a tacit admission that peak oil is upon us.
Now, if what these people mean is that oil supply capacity could grow, but won't because we won't need it, then one must ask the complicated question of why people won't need it. Is it because the economy has been so decimated by a debt-fueled crash aggravated by high oil and other resource prices that it cannot grow? Is it simply because people across the globe on average don't feel that they need to use more oil despite the fact that population continues to grow?
Some claim that energy efficiency and the growing production of alternative fuels will depress oil demand. But no one was saying this before the crash. Why has it suddenly become relevant? Did we just discover energy efficiency and alternative fuels?
It is a truism that no one knows whether the world has reached peak oil or will reach it soon. We'll only know many years after it occurs. But the rush to announce that peak demand has arrived seems to be nothing more than an attempt to put a happy face on peak oil.
No matter what the reason, if world oil production has peaked, we are all in serious trouble. Peak means decline won't be very far away. Peak means economic recovery, let alone robust growth, may be all but impossible. Of course, we could try to run the world economy on other fuels such as natural gas and coal. But we have not prepared our infrastructure to do so, and such preparations are measured in decades, not years. Besides, there are serious questions about the longevity of these fuels as well, especially if we vastly ramp up their consumption.
The announcement of peak demand then is really designed to allow all those who made faulty oil production forecasts to keep selling their sunny optimism about future energy supplies while covering their asses for when the verdict on peak finally comes in. What the purveyors of the peak demand thesis really need to do is find some clothes to put on over their dream-time underwear and get to work figuring out where they went wrong in their analyses of oil supplies.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Climate change deniers and our human nature
Anyone who has been following the news on climate change recently already knows about the release of hacked emails of British climate scientists. The emails were used by so-called skeptics--most of whom get their funding from fossil fuel interests--to claim that there was something rotten in climate science. As far as I can tell, there isn't much to the so-called skeptics' claims about the emails. But even if their claims were to involve legitimate questions about some aspects of climate science, this would be nothing new.
That's because there is nothing that is absolutely settled in science. It is a process of ongoing inquiry fostered by disagreements between researchers of good faith who try to resolve their differences by looking for more conclusive evidence. It is important to note that so far fossil fuel companies and their supporters have yet to fund truly independent scientific inquiry into climate change. That's because they do not want truly independent inquiry since they would not be able to control the outcome. So, they are not part of the search for the truth since they offer no original physical observations or measurements to further our understanding of climate. But, then it is far easier to throw darts at others from a safe distance than engage in genuine scientific inquiry.
(The one time the fossil fuel interests did try to have some scientific rigor infused into their thinking, they didn't like the results. A primer on climate science prepared in 1995 by the industry-funded Global Climate Coalition's Science and Technical Advisory Committee confirmed key elements of the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The primer was never released and only surfaced a decade later, several years after the coalition had disbanded. You can read it here.)
The reason such sloppy critiques of climate science have gained so much traction with the public has less to do with their scientific logic--which is almost nonexistent--and more to do with human psychology. Humans tend to be heavily influenced by recent events and by their social milieu. For example, they tend to give more credence to something they heard last week at a party with friends than something published in a scientific journal last year even if it was given broad media play. Hence the effect on the public mind of the not-so-coincidental release of the above mentioned hacked emails right before the Copenhagen climate summit--and the ongoing viral campaign on the Internet, perfect for getting people to transmit disinformation person to person: "I read on the net that..."
Humans also tend to take their cues from their immediate surroundings. That's no surprise. It's really cold and snowy this winter here in the northern United States, ergo some people conclude that global warming must not be that big a deal. Yes, it's absolutely dry as a bone in Australia where it is currently summer and a severe drought has been in progress for years with devastating results. But if you don't live in Australia, you don't think about it much even if you hear something about it on the news.
Finally, humans greatly discount possible future events. This is an understandable evolutionary feature. Humans evolved to concentrate on their current surroundings, not some hypothetical future. They seek their food, status, safety and other satisfactions in the here and now. Is there really any time other than now if you are dealing with your immediate needs?
Climate denial public relations pros know all this about humans, and they count on it to make their strategies successful.
Despite all this it is a testament to humans as planning animals that most people in the world continue to believe that climate change is an important issue that needs to be addressed. But, this may not be enough. It is in the nature of humans to pay attention to the most vocal elements of society, and the so-called skeptics are quite vocal. They are constantly squawking to the media and obtaining coverage (unwarranted, in my view, since they offer mostly misinformation).
But, the fossil fuel interests do not need to defeat climate change regulations. They only need to delay or dilute them in order to achieve their goals. Delay gives those interests one more day, one more week, one more year, maybe even one more decade to sell their in-ground inventories of fossil fuels in an unrestricted manner. Every moment's delay means more money. And, diluting the regulations when they eventually arrive means opportunities for loopholes and even sanctioned delays that will allow them to continue to evade responsibility for their role in climate change.
The members of the climate change denial club are against efforts to control emissions not only because of the threat to profits, but also because they believe that climate change legislation will mean greater government intrusion into their lives. Ironically, when the crises associated with climate change emerge--declines in water and food supplies, mass migrations from areas affected negatively by climate change, threats to coastal areas due to rising seas--we will almost certainly see government intervention in ways that are far more intrusive than those needed to prevent these crises in the first place.
That's because there is nothing that is absolutely settled in science. It is a process of ongoing inquiry fostered by disagreements between researchers of good faith who try to resolve their differences by looking for more conclusive evidence. It is important to note that so far fossil fuel companies and their supporters have yet to fund truly independent scientific inquiry into climate change. That's because they do not want truly independent inquiry since they would not be able to control the outcome. So, they are not part of the search for the truth since they offer no original physical observations or measurements to further our understanding of climate. But, then it is far easier to throw darts at others from a safe distance than engage in genuine scientific inquiry.
(The one time the fossil fuel interests did try to have some scientific rigor infused into their thinking, they didn't like the results. A primer on climate science prepared in 1995 by the industry-funded Global Climate Coalition's Science and Technical Advisory Committee confirmed key elements of the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The primer was never released and only surfaced a decade later, several years after the coalition had disbanded. You can read it here.)
The reason such sloppy critiques of climate science have gained so much traction with the public has less to do with their scientific logic--which is almost nonexistent--and more to do with human psychology. Humans tend to be heavily influenced by recent events and by their social milieu. For example, they tend to give more credence to something they heard last week at a party with friends than something published in a scientific journal last year even if it was given broad media play. Hence the effect on the public mind of the not-so-coincidental release of the above mentioned hacked emails right before the Copenhagen climate summit--and the ongoing viral campaign on the Internet, perfect for getting people to transmit disinformation person to person: "I read on the net that..."
Humans also tend to take their cues from their immediate surroundings. That's no surprise. It's really cold and snowy this winter here in the northern United States, ergo some people conclude that global warming must not be that big a deal. Yes, it's absolutely dry as a bone in Australia where it is currently summer and a severe drought has been in progress for years with devastating results. But if you don't live in Australia, you don't think about it much even if you hear something about it on the news.
Finally, humans greatly discount possible future events. This is an understandable evolutionary feature. Humans evolved to concentrate on their current surroundings, not some hypothetical future. They seek their food, status, safety and other satisfactions in the here and now. Is there really any time other than now if you are dealing with your immediate needs?
Climate denial public relations pros know all this about humans, and they count on it to make their strategies successful.
Despite all this it is a testament to humans as planning animals that most people in the world continue to believe that climate change is an important issue that needs to be addressed. But, this may not be enough. It is in the nature of humans to pay attention to the most vocal elements of society, and the so-called skeptics are quite vocal. They are constantly squawking to the media and obtaining coverage (unwarranted, in my view, since they offer mostly misinformation).
But, the fossil fuel interests do not need to defeat climate change regulations. They only need to delay or dilute them in order to achieve their goals. Delay gives those interests one more day, one more week, one more year, maybe even one more decade to sell their in-ground inventories of fossil fuels in an unrestricted manner. Every moment's delay means more money. And, diluting the regulations when they eventually arrive means opportunities for loopholes and even sanctioned delays that will allow them to continue to evade responsibility for their role in climate change.
The members of the climate change denial club are against efforts to control emissions not only because of the threat to profits, but also because they believe that climate change legislation will mean greater government intrusion into their lives. Ironically, when the crises associated with climate change emerge--declines in water and food supplies, mass migrations from areas affected negatively by climate change, threats to coastal areas due to rising seas--we will almost certainly see government intervention in ways that are far more intrusive than those needed to prevent these crises in the first place.
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