The post-peak die-off; The MonteQuest scenario.

IslandCrow

To try and understand the scale of what a die-off would mean, I have taken figures from the 2006 World Population Data Sheet, and played around with what it would mean to just reach a state of NO population growth.

I have plotted the birth rate, death rate and migration figures (all data is per thousand):
birth rate / death rate / migration
Europe 10 / 12 / 2
North America 14 / 8 / 4
Asia 20 / 7 / 0
World 21 / 9 / --

Some comments on this, and the difference facing different parts of the world.

Europe is currently facing a natural decline in population (death rate higher than birth rate), but this is being offset by inward migration.

For North America to get to the stage of stable population numbers, assuming the same rate of migration, then the death rate would have to go up 125%.

For the world to reach stable population the overall death rate would have to rise 133%.

For Asia to reach stable population the overall death rate would have to rise 200% (that is 3 times higher than now).

I know that the assumption of birth rate and migration staying the same are unrealistic, but the above figures gives some indication of the scale of any population adjustment, without it even being a die-off. The scale overwhelms me.
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MonteQuest

And the thing I think many miss here, is that there will be a die-off, even if oil never peaks.

Why?

Because oil or energy does not set the carrying capacity, the least abundant necessity does, and it was fossil fuels that allowed us to "overshoot."

Energy is just the most prominent candidate for the "limiting factor".

Die-off is always the sequel to overshoot.

Even if fossil fuels were infinite, the earth's environment cannot absorb their use. Global warming, loss of biodiversity, etc. All of these are examples of environmental degradation as a result.

Just like yeast, we will die-off in our own wastes eventually.
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MonteQuest

Understand this: Eventually, to replace fossil fuels, all energy will have to be derived directly or indirectly from the sun. However, if our current fossil fuel energy demand would have to be supplied solely from solar sources, what are the consequences of diverting that much solar energy to human use?

We already appropriate 40% of the earth's NPP. Solar energy, just because it isn't used by man doesn't mean it isn't used or is wasted. In nature, there is no such thing as waste. It is all part of the ecological balance.

According to energy expert John Holdren, the potential environmental problems with solar energy generation can be summarized as follows:

Ludi

The only really sustainable and renewable energy is that passing through the Earth's life systems - we can't call it sustainable or renewable if we obstruct it and prevent it from fullfilling its function, as might be the case with widescale wind, solar, tidal, or biofuel.

"System yield* is the sum total of surplus energy produced by, stored, conserved, reused, or converted by the design. Energy is in surplus once the system itself has available all its needs for growth, reproduction, and maintenance.

Living things, including people, are the only effective intervening systems to capture resources on this planet, and to produce a yield. Thus, it is the sum and capacity of life forms which decide total system yield and surplus." - Bill Mollison, 'Permaculture: a designers manual'

A resource is only renewable or sustainable if it can be temporarily diverted for human use. Any obstruction or permanent diversion for human use isn't sustainable or renewable. Our current way of life diverts, as Monte points out, 40% of the Earth's life systems for our use. Much of this is effectively permanently diverted by desertification, depletion, extinction, etc. Desertification and extinction are clear indications that we are effectively permanently (in our human timeframe) diverting energy away from the Earth's life systems and in so doing, reducing the Earth's carrying capacity for human and other life.

* by "system yield" here Mollison means human carrying capacity.
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Revi · Fusion Joined: Apr 25, 2005 Posts: 3112 Location: Maine

We are in overshoot, but most of the people who are overusing the earth's systems live in the huge cities and the huge slums and suburbs that surround them. Now the interesting question is whether they can continue to control the world's resources from those areas when energy becomes expensive. Will we continue to feed those huge cities when it becomes expensive to transport food? Or will the megacities be turned off? The dieoff may start in the rural areas, as they are far from distribution points. Hard to tell.

thuja

Revi · Fusion Joined: Apr 25, 2005 Posts: 3112 Location: Maine

Will the rich still live in the megacities? I think not. I think that they will abandon them quickly once they become unpleasant. Places like NYC, Mexico City and Lagos will still be there, but they will be uninhabited by the world's elite. Why live there? Visit once in a while, maybe when you are not in Tuscany. I have a friend who has an apple orchard. The furthest afield he sells his apples is about 20 miles. The rest of his production gets sold within about 5 miles. We make maple syrup and sell it all locally. There isn't going to be much surplus to sell further afield. Why would I want to sell to a distant megacity? The price would have to be quite a bit higher in order to make it worth my while.

I think you are right. Industrial agriculture is doomed without cheap energy. It just doesn't add up. The Maine Legislature is working on subsidizing farmers so that they can buy diesel to get their hay in this summer. It just doesn't pay to make hay at $3 a gallon. Now either the price of hay will have to go up a lot, or the hay won't get cut. Maybe it will make more sense to have a smaller farm and put the cows out on pasture more. Maybe the price of food needs to go up a lot to cover the costs of production. Whatever happens, there will be a lot of people wailing. Cheap food is over.

AgentR

eXpat · Intermediate Crude Joined: Jun 08, 2006 Posts: 861

There's an excellent article by Stephen Lendman called "Resource Wars - Can We Survive Them?", link, that makes very good points about the years to come:

Ludi

peripato · Heavy Crude Joined: May 03, 2005 Posts: 386

Revi · Fusion Joined: Apr 25, 2005 Posts: 3112 Location: Maine

We get about half our heat, 3/4 of our hot water, all our electricity and maybe soon half our transportation from renewable sources. I think that a lot of people could do this too. They might just survive the dieoff. The Amish, and a few of us greenies might just make it. Here's the car we're working on:

www.sunnev.com

gg3

About sequestering all that sunlight: I had similar thoughts about wind, but mostly in reference to the microclimates in areas that are subject to significant wind harvesting. OTOH, Ma Nature is bigger than we are, so it may be that the worst we can do with renewables is inconsequential to overall climate & weather.

About that dieoff: 125% increase in the death rate for North America, eh? See, I keep telling y'all that we have to decrease the smoking age to 16, put ciggie machines in highschools and on playgrounds, decrease the drinking age to 18, stop carding college kids at the liquor stores, forget about adding safety features to SUVs, legalize recreational marijuana and opiates, and promote hazardous sports such as mountain climbing and skydiving. Encourage people to voluntarily do various things that will shorten their lifespans. And also encourage all forms of sex other than p/v intercourse.

If we do all of the above, we might be able to make it through without having a starvation lottery or a gas chamber jackpot.

Woo... hoo.

MonteQuest

chumley · Tar Sands Joined: Jun 08, 2007 Posts: 38

{topic merged}

This post is pasted from another forum. I wanted to see feedback on my speculation after spending some time researching this subject. Unfortunately it starts off mid-thread in regards to a collapse of civilization and mass die off..........

"I only mentioned oil sands as one alternative. I agree it is difficult to extract from the ground and causes severe stress on the local ecology from whence it comes. However Canada is currently exporting synthetic oil (from oil sands) to our country to support our energy needs.The oil sands produce a little over 1 million barrels per day. Future production is said to be about 3 to 4 million barrels per day by 2015. They would not be doing this if it was not profitable. The major roadblock to oil sand production is it costs about $15 dollars a barrel to extract, while it only costs approximately $2 to extract oil from places such as saudi arabia. Hence the big oil companies will not fully embrace the concept in america until the profit margins are more palatable to them. Yes I understand this is not a huge amount in regards to global consumption, but it is viable oil of which we have abundant reserves.

Another alternative fuel is coal. The US holds the largest reserves of coal in the world. Roughly HALF of our electrical generating capacity is powered by coal. 92% of the coal mined in this country is used to generate electricity. They do this by burning the coal to create steam, which in turns spins the turbines which produce electricity. This form of power generation is also stressful to the enviroment.....co2 gases when burned and mining operations to extract the coal and water depletion. However if roughly half the electricity generated in the US is by coal you could, in dire times increase the amount of coal burning plants, retool other plants to use coal in place of oil, increase the amount of electricity being generated from the current coal burning plants. Not the prettiest ecological picture, but a 100% viable source for generating electricity for the US. The biggest obstacle to all this is enviromental concerns and enviromental groups who are vehementally opposed to using coal(understandable given its drawbacks).

As far as food and agriculture goes there are problems there as well. But an interesting fact is that the US produces approximately 65% of the worlds food right now(and yes I understand that oil drives this production). If the SHTF then we will just stop exporting food to feed the poor nations and keep what we can produce in the US to feed our own people. Yes there will be MUCH less food produced, but considering we export well over half of our food production outside of our borders this could gives us a little cushion.

I am not denying that peak oil will have a tremendous impact on how we live in the future, but to say the world will go to a complete blackout and anarchy is an extreme take on this crisis. I believe the places that will be the worst off are the historically poorer nations, who live on the knife- edge of survival now mostly due to the large sums of food and money that the western nations supply(specifically the United States). Unfortunately most of those Nations have despotic leaders who hijack the money and food for their own personal gain. If we do have a population decrease on large scale it will be disproportianately felt by poor people in poor countries.

According to United Nations figures here is how the population breaks down courtesy of a 1999 population survey

geographical area % population of world # of people in area future population trend

north america 5% ~350 million increasing slowly

asia 57% ~3 billion increasing moderately

sub sahara 18% ~770 million increasing quickly

europe 12% ~720 million decreasing moderately

south america 8% ~511 million increasing moderately

It would seem to me that the places that have the most unsustainable populations (that are still increasing) would be Africa, middle east, asia. These would be the areas that appear most vulnerable to peak oil. What natural resources do they have in the middle east besides oil? Lots of sand.

North America seems to be in a good position population wise. We have abundant natural resources and a manageable population. Albeit we would have to abandon the arid southwest.

Asia while having natural resources is GROSSLY overpopulated.

Middle east vastly overpopulated with minimal natural resources.

Africa is screwed....horrible governments, limited infrastructure, mass poverty.

Europe has a dense population, but they have sustainable infrastructure and cities and towns that were designed and established well before the oil age. They also have made inroads to becoming less dependant on fossil fuels, a good start.

Google is your friend...use it. These are my opinions after doing hours of research for myself and extrapulating the information I have researched. I dont expect to change anyone's mind regarding peak oil. I just felt that so many people state so many opinions that I would invest some of my time to research this issue and post what I think about this whole thing. While I may have derived some of my own conclussions from my research, the figures I presented are fairly accurate. I did round out to whole numbers on the figures of the UN population report and used approximate numbers on energy resources in North America(since it does vary mildly per site).

We have the coal, we have the rail lines, we have the infrastructure, we have the farmland, we have alot of freshwater sources, we have the freedom to chose our path, we are not grossly overpopulated, approximately half our electricity is produced by known technology and abundant coal , we can expand this form of generating capacity..........

our ridiculous love affair with overpowered sports cars that can only drive 65mph legally and have 400 horsepower, our ridiculous love affair with needing a 5000 pound SUV to transport a 120 pound person( talking on a cell phone) to the corner store or thru an inch of snow(we seemed to do this fine in passenger cars).

These things will have to change. Our entire concept of personal transportation will have to change! I already own a bike and I live within a 15 minute ride to my work.

It will be tough for sure, but I think we have alot of advantages in North America. Suburbia being our biggest challenge. And our tremendous appetite for fuel(silly cars, air conditioning, computers, lights etc.)

Sorry about the length of the post and if you made it this far thanks for taking the time to read thru what I concede are only my personal opinions. And opinions are like buttholes....everyone has one and they all stink."