Demographic Winter: Decline of the Human Family

[Michael_David]

At present we have no plan for how to replace this volume of oil to support 6.7 billion people. We are now at peak production, and it would seem we must either find some source to replace the energy that will no longer be available when this oil disappears, or reduce our usage accordingly over the coming decades. Can we do it?

StAnastasia

Peak production means what? With OPEC cutting production to raise the price; the US not pumping because it costs more then it fetches; a lot of oil stays in the ground right now due to economic issues. And with the global recession hitting everywhere, perhaps a back-step with these economic issues will again make it feasible to pump and transport at reasonable costs… no manipulation!

Also, Americans have been driving less since that ‘magic’ $4 a gal sunk in… even now, we have not increased our miles on the road yet even though the price is down. Too many other things are absorbing our funds to change the life-style back to the free and easy manner. And the massive unemployment will keep it that way for quite a while once this starts to go the other direction. It’s a bit like the ‘old-timers’… the ones that lived through the Great Depression, the way they lived after was not the same as the way they did before. But how many of the following generations would listen to grandpa and grandma? Times they were a cooking hot.

Now it is our turn to live through it and learn what the ‘old-timers’ already knew, though many are not alive anymore to say so. There is a history lesson to be learned here, because most of this generation did not learn or remember the history before them. And even those that did remember and start to take measures to prevent it, they were massively out-numbered by the ones that didn’t see it at all. So, as a nation, and even global, we are sinking along with it because of being out numbered.

We can talk and warn till we are blue in the face, even by example (me and my 60 mpg Metro), it was laughed at and made jokes of. Now who is laughing? Grandpa and grandma were right about a lot of things, why doubt their experiences? So was Pa and Ma… all they had in mind was our welfare… but, we showed em how wrong (right) they were, didn’t we?

History is a marvelous teacher, if we can relate it to the present. This is not such a New Age after all… it’s just a re-run of the old black and white, but today, it’s in color. Those 7 Deadlies go back as far as the Bible goes, and are with us today, modernized a bit, but the same at the core. (By modernized I mean rationalized more convincingly by those that are doing it)

All we can do now is hope and pray… ride it out like a storm. Perhaps, good will come out of it all, look how nice grandpa and grandma turned out?

 

[StAnastasia]

Peak production means what? With OPEC cutting production to raise the price; the US not pumping because it costs more then it fetches; a lot of oil stays in the ground right now due to economic issues. And with the global recession hitting everywhere, perhaps a back-step with these economic issues will again make it feasible to pump and transport at reasonable costs… no manipulation!

Hubbert’s Peak refers to the maximum oil production, which we will reach sometime in the coming decade. All resources have a peak of maximal extraction; the peak of US production was 1970, and the peak of global production will be soon. At the same time, demand for oil (for agriculture, transportation, plastics) will increase as the supply decreases.

You are right that oil production will not follow a sharp or smoothly curved peak, but what Kunstler calls a “bumpy plateau.” Production will fluctuate in response to macroeconomic factors, but the overall trend will be downward. We will go from virtually zero production in 1859 to 86,400,000 barrels a day to virtually zero in 2100. Natural gas will last longer, but it is not infinite, and will follow oil in a few decades.

Since support of our 6.7 billion people is overwhelmingly dependent on petroleum, our population will decline accordingly. A life lived more softly in response to our environment may follow.

StAnastasia

 

[StAnastasia]

Sure it is - you support the reduction of family size, for one. How do you suppose that happens, especially using organizations like the UN?

It’s simple math. Our population depends on cheap, plentiful oil, without which it would not stand at the current extraordinary level of 6.7 billion people. Population will decrease one way or another as the oil goes away forever, and the only question is whether it will crash catastrophically (through war, famine and disease) or whether we can collectively bring ourselves to engineer a gentle landing that preserves civilization and human values. As a Catholic, I believe we have a moral obligation to follow the latter path.

StAnastasia

 

[Michael_David]

Since support of our 6.7 billion people is overwhelmingly dependent on petroleum, our population will decline accordingly. A life lived more softly in response to our environment may follow.
StAnastasia

Ahh, but, with technology we could make oil ‘obsolete’ before 2100. Perhaps hydrogen fuel (air and water). Perhaps in the interim compresses natural gas. Perhaps ???

And a life lived “more softly” is what all us human beings could be doing. Stress would decline; medicine would slow as we lived lives like God intended; Families would be families again; morals would come back into fashion… just because it’s the right thing to do; Churches would maybe have to have more Sunday Masses to accommodate the increased attendance (remember when there were 3-4 Masses… instead of the 1-2 now?); walking and exercise would be a natural means of living, instead of a side-need due to our laxness now; prepping good meals may become a new (old) art again; kids may be raised by the parents again, instead of the ‘hired-hands’; schools may slow education of the mind to match the emotional and moral growth so as to keep the kids balanced and able to use ‘wisely’ what they have been given (this like the parochial schools do now with moral education alongside the mental… although the emotional comes with living life); all this will get us back to what we are really on this earth to do/be!

You know, personally, I see nothing wrong with running out of oil… let it be! Perhaps more of us will be closer to heaven then the way it’s going now. If it doesn’t go in that direction, it will take Christ’s second coming to remedy the situation. Do you feel like you are being ‘sifted’ today? Which way will you go? Who are you looking to for healing? Will we be as soft and wise as our grandparents, parents in their later years? Will our children, grandchildren listen to us? Like we listened to ours???

Time will tell…

 

[Jennifer123]

It’s simple math. Our population depends on cheap, plentiful oil, without which it would not stand at the current extraordinary level of 6.7 billion people. Population will decrease one way or another as the oil goes away forever, and the only question is whether it will crash catastrophically (through war, famine and disease) or whether we can collectively bring ourselves to engineer a gentle landing that preserves civilization and human values. As a Catholic, I believe we have a moral obligation to follow the latter path.

StAnastasia

How do you suppose the human population get to “responsible” levels?

 

[StAnastasia]

How do you suppose the human population get to “responsible” levels?

Education and self control. If not, famine, resource wars, genocide, and epidemic diseases will do the work for us.

 

[StAnastasia]

Ahh, but, with technology we could make oil ‘obsolete’ before 2100. Perhaps hydrogen fuel (air and water). Perhaps in the interim compresses natural gas.

Our advanced technology – as compared with 1859 technology – will help us extract more energy. But technology is not energy – it is merely a tool. We conveniently forget that our current 6.7 billion humans are living on borrowed time, exploiting energy stored over hundreds of millions of years, and that we are exhausting this one-time bonanza of fossil fuels in a mere two or three centuries. If you read the work of biologists, anthropologists and resource economists who have studied carrying capacity, you will find that while they differ as to their estimates of a sustainable number of humans – ranging between one and three billion – not one calculates that we can sustain seven, eight, nine or ten billion for long once the easy oil and gas are gone. Looking at the long evolutionary history of humankind, what we are seeing right now in the human population is merely a temporary blip.

StAnastasia

 

[Jennifer123]

Education and self control. If not, famine, resource wars, genocide, and epidemic diseases will do the work for us.

I agree with self-control and the ways we will do ourselves in not because of overpopulation but because of our paganistic ways.

But, please expand on the education part - what does that mean? What kind of education do we need? How will we limit our family size?

 

[Michael_David]

Our advanced technology – as compared with 1859 technology – will help us extract more energy. But technology is not energy – it is merely a tool. We conveniently forget that our current 6.7 billion humans are living on borrowed time, exploiting energy stored over hundreds of millions of years, and that we are exhausting this one-time bonanza of fossil fuels in a mere two or three centuries. If you read the work of biologists, anthropologists and resource economists who have studied carrying capacity, you will find that while they differ as to their estimates of a sustainable number of humans – ranging between one and three billion – not one calculates that we can sustain seven, eight, nine or ten billion for long once the easy oil and gas are gone. Looking at the long evolutionary history of humankind, what we are seeing right now in the human population is merely a temporary blip.

StAnastasia

Let’s say technology does make the fuel-cell viable for mass production… Cars would be outfitted with them; industries would be outfitted with them; residents would be outfitted with them; (maybe I should invest in this early ). These little marvels run on water… they ‘burn’ it! So you see, the glaciers melting couldn’t be timed any better. Think on this closely now… as the water gets used massively, the ocean levels will go down, then we will have more land for more people and also growing more food. Even the fish that normally stratify at a certain depth, will move to new feeding grounds as the water goes down. ((Say, does anyone know how many billion-barrels of water there are in the oceans?)) Then, with the little oil we need for plastic’s and medicinal and fertilizer, those 2 wells in Oklahoma I saw could do the job. And no, technology is not energy, but it can make things that use other forms of energy for us. Just like wood> coal> oil> gas> nuclear> water> hydrogen> fusion/fission> plasma> ???

I know you are talking about carrying capacity of the earth. But this is looked at by what we ‘now’ know… not what we ‘will’ know when it comes that time. The electric car may not be in full swing by the time fuel-cells are taking over; and they may not be in full swing by the time nuclear takes over; and that may not be in full swing by the time something else takes over. Adaptability is the magic word here… ingenuity gets into the picture too. (Just like the fuel-cell, who would of thought to ‘burn’ water, when water is used to put fires out?) Who thinks of these kind of things?

So these mathematicians will have to recalculate the earths carrying capacity when these new energy fuels are on the market, created by technology.

 

[StAnastasia]

IBut, please expand on the education part - what does that mean? What kind of education do we need? How will we limit our family size?

We generally need education about the limits to growth of human society and communities. For too long we had adopted “human exceptionalism” – the view that we are exempt from the biological constraints upon other species. In the future reproduction will have to take place at replacement rate. I would certainly hope this happens voluntarily, as governmental coercion would be horrific.

S.

 

[StAnastasia]

And no, technology is not energy, but it can make things that use other forms of energy for us. Just like wood> coal> oil> gas> nuclear> water> hydrogen> fusion/fission> plasma> ??? .

Michael David, the problem is that none of the other technologies you speak about exist. It is fine to say “we will discover something else when the oil runs out,” but the oil is running out, and no major discoveries have been made to replace the lost energy.

Even if shale oil, tar sands, and nuclear do eventually play a role in replacing the lost energy from the “easy oil” these are not in place now. The peak of production is likely to happen between 2010 and 2015, and we are talking maybe decades before alternatives come on line. Since it takes an average of ten calories of fossil fuel to produce every calorie of food, you can see why we will be up a creek when the cheap and convenient oil is gone. <sustainabletable.org/issues/energy/

I fear that if we don’t begin scaling back our population now through smaller families, and retrofitting our agriculture and transportation systems for the post-petroleum future, billions will die of starvation in the twenty-first century. This ought to be of concern to Catholics.

StAnastasia

 

[Michael_David]

Michael David, the problem is that none of the other technologies you speak about exist. It is fine to say “we will discover something else when the oil runs out,” but the oil is running out, and no major discoveries have been made to replace the lost energy.

StAnastasia

OHH! Batteries in cars exist; fuel-cells in cars do exist; nuclear powered military equipment and sub’s exist; solar power does exist; wind power does exist; hydrogen energy does exist; fission/fusion energy is being tested. I have run a big diesel on natural gas to generate cooling, our power company uses fleet vehicles running on compressed natural gas (instead of propane)… these are out there now and working (being tested).

Now you are delving into my career field… things I know to be not only on the drawing board but actually out there in the field being used. There is a lag between enterprising companies (maintaining secrets for patent rights) doing things (research and development) and getting these to the ‘bigger’ market (for profit) and the time that it gets put in a book to be studied in a school setting. What is public knowledge was once private (perhaps in a garage like Bill Gates and H. Packard started what we are now using to post these messages).

So the idea that ‘non of these other technologies exist’ is not correct… they do exist! Look in the garages; look behind the locked corporate doors; look on the plains of Iowa; look at the utility company vehicles when they fix that downed power line; just look around, here and there you will see it (in use)… these things have not made the books yet as they may be experimental.

Here to, ‘experimental’ is an illusive word. Hasn’t it all been experimental? Always being improved to make it better and better still. Always being redeveloped and modified. And here in the US with all the liability issues, one does not want to put out to the common person (who seems to always find a way to get hurt by it) until it’s ‘fool-proof’. But these are to be had for people who know what can go wrong and take care not to do that. Example: if everyone could wire their house electricians would not be needed. How many would end up getting zapped if that would be? What I am saying is that many know how to handle a variety of things and not get burned… others do not have this talent. And this is the liability issue most new products have to look at when that product hits the market.

So, do believe me, these things DO exist and are being used as I write this. Looking at a car, it looks like a car, even the body has the manufacture plate on it… but what is under the hood, or in the tank you cannot see. You have maybe drove alongside a fuel-cell vehicle without even knowing it… unless he uses that good ole garden hose to fill his tank.

 

[manualman]

Water is not an energy “source” even with fuel cells. The fuel cell essentially uses water in the process of STORING energy, but water is not the SOURCE of the energy. Same goes for hydrogen. You have to GET the hydrogen before you can use it as a fuel.

Technically, there are NO truly renewable energy sources. By definition, energy is always conserved. The Sun itself is not a renewable energy source as it will burn itself out someday.

Like the Sun, we will eventually run out of oil. But not soon, not if we use what we have properly. There is no question that we’ve been wasteful with oil in recent decades. Hopefully, we’ve turned a corner where efficiency will start to increase dramatically.

Over time, the solar, wind, hydropower and geothermal, and nuclear breeder reactors will take over as the oil supply dwindles. The bell curve is going to be more gentle than the doomsayers predict. Yeah, we’ll need to deal with higher energy prices. Waah.

 

[StAnastasia]

So the idea that ‘non of these other technologies exist’ is not correct… they do exist! … just look around, here and there you will see it (in use)… these things have not made the books yet as they may be experimental.

Michael David, the technologies in question do not exist in sufficient quantities and application to provide more than a small fraction of the energy 6.7 billion people have come to expect. Whether they ever will support us is an open question, a gamble, and by adding population we are taking this gamble. Is this gamble worth it? Only time will tell.

Here’ an analogy. Suppose we inhabit an island that can support 100 people sustainably. Then, we discover a mysterious cache of food that allows the population to grows to 200, then 300; eventually it reaches 670 people. One day we discover that we have used up half this mysterious cache of food. We don’t know if we will find any more mysterious caches, but we invite more people onto the island. At what point does it become a prudential obligation to stop inviting people to the island, anticipating the end of the mysterious cache, when the island will again support only 100 people?

Remember, in real life we cannot leave the island – planet earth – when it becomes too crowded and with to little energy to support nine or ten billion people.

StAnastasia

 

[StAnastasia]

Like the Sun, we will eventually run out of oil. But not soon, not if we use what we have properly. There is no question that we’ve been wasteful with oil in recent decades. Hopefully, we’ve turned a corner where efficiency will start to increase dramatically.

manualman, the operative word is “properly.” Oil is too precious a resource – for lubrication, pharmaceuticals, plastics, prostheses, food and agriculture – for us to be arrogantly burning it in our SUVs and unnecessary air travel.

When we have good rail networks people will use them: a friend of mine in LA told me yesterday that lots of people who started taking the “Blue Line” (one of the few light rail systems there) during the fuel crisis continue to use it even with lower gasoline prices because it is so convenient not to have to rely on a car.

StAnastasia

 

[Michael_David]

You know, since all things are ‘finite’, oil being one of these, perhaps prudence is needed here. No matter which way we go, say more people, the oil lasts shorter, less people, the oil last longer… but Will still run out. As manualman put it, even the sun will someday not shine… where will our kids be then? How far out, after us, are we to make sure they have enough? Even if they abuse it, much like we have so freely. Even before years end, an extra second will be added to time to make up for the slower spin of the earth. And if the whole universe is expanding yet, the relative positions are changing, so how do we know where it is we really are by basing it on moving objects? The tilt of the earth actually has a wobble of some 2 degrees. The magnetic pole moves also. All this is relative. Perhaps our energy use is too. We humans have gotten this far into maintaining life, having off-spring, and surviving by someone thinking of something better.

Seems we are a people of users, and put little back in to keep the earth going. Perhaps plant a tree on Arbor Day. Even in our planting a garden out back, we use fertilizer (oil derived) and manual labor which is calorie based which is dependent on food. As far as I can take it, the sunshine is our only renewable resource, and that too someday will go black. So, non of our offspring will survive forever… not here on earth. Seems like if we beat the loss of oil in 2050 or 2100, we have not beat the sun going black whenever it does.

We seen to have daily tasks; weekly tasks; monthly tasks; yearly tasks; generational tasks; and eternal tasks to manage while on this earth. For me, the eternal task done well, has all the others fall into place… but it is the least thought about with all the other ‘pressing’ problems looking us in the face. Yes, we should use the earths resources prudently as a gift from God; and yes we should use our spiritual gifts to the max as a gift from God; seems using the spiritual gifts prudently and using the earths resources to the max has gotten us into this mess. Somehow our priorities have to come back to where they should be for us to survive another century… and into finite.

I do not think we were meant to live on this earth and all our umpteen generations after us forever… this is not why God made us. The soul will live on… but where?!

 

[Jennifer123]

In the future reproduction will have to take place at replacement rate. I would certainly hope this happens voluntarily, as governmental coercion would be horrific.

S.

How would people ensure their reproduction took place at replacement rate? What kind of constraints would a couple place on the marital embrace, for instance?

 

[LeroyCRHP]

The numbers say this, the only thing not known really is how much oil is out there. I still remember in the 70’s we were running out of oil then, oil 5-10 years left and see what happened.

Where does oil come from and is it being continuously made? There are theories, but no one knows for sure yet.
livescience.com/environment/051011_oil_origins.html

That’s what we are doing now. At this rate – with SUVs, long commutes, and plentiful air travel – we’ll have completed the project of using up the affordable oil by 2050 or so. If we implement energy saving measures, we might be able to stretch that out to 2075 or so.

StAnastasia

 

[StAnastasia]

How would people ensure their reproduction took place at replacement rate? What kind of constraints would a couple place on the marital embrace, for instance?

I imagine that’s up to each couple. What I would hate is for the US to get so overcrowded that some future government imposes a draconian one-child policy because people have been no good at policing themselves.

StAnastasia

 

[StAnastasia]

The numbers say this, the only thing not known really is how much oil is out there. I still remember in the 70’s we were running out of oil then, oil 5-10 years left and see what happened…Where does oil come from and is it being continuously made? There are theories, but no one knows for sure yet.
livescience.com/environment/051011_oil_origins.html

Oil is not being continuously made – the “abiotic theory of oil” holds no water (so to speak). The temporary glitch in the 1970s had to do with geopolitics and the rise of OPEC. The problem now is that known oil fields are generally in decline, like the Al Ghawar in Saudi Arabia and the Cantarell in Mexico.