Humans Will Need Two Earths By 2030 738
An anonymous reader writes "A recent report warns that humans are overusing the resources of the planet and will need two Earths by the year 2030. The Living Planet Report tells that the demands on natural resources have doubled in the past 50 years and are now outstripping what the Earth can provide by more than half."
just like "Day After Tomorrow? (Score:5, Informative)
And by falling apart I don't mean charts and graphs, I mean "The Day After Tomorrow" falling apart.
So, superstorms that freeze the Earth, and CGI wolves?
It may happen one day... (Score:4, Informative)
But I still remember in the 70s how oil was going to run out by 1990; we seem to have had only twenty years' supply of oil left for as long as I remember. Similarly, half the world was going to have starved by 2000, but instead we've seen population continue to increase.
The hair-shirt left have cried disaster so many times that it's impossible to take them seriously anymore.
Link to the actual report... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Misleading (Score:5, Informative)
This was soured from a WWF report. The same WWF that has been making dire predictions form day 1, and even managed to get their non-peer-reviewed policy papers (it isn't even science) into the IPCC reports. Wherein, recently, the IPCC has has to issue retractions for it not being up to scientific scrutiny.
In short, nothing to see here, move along. It's just WWF campaigning for more money.
Re:Too bad for the "organic food" folks... (Score:5, Informative)
At present rate we have what ... 100 years of potash in the ground? At some point we will have to sustain the production with only atmospheric nitrogen.
Just because the same kind of revolutions need to keep happening doesn't mean they will ... all our revolutions up till now have dependent on non renewable resources, if we don't have a sustainable revolution in energy production in the near future (and I don't think liquid sodium reactors qualify) we will be fucked. Because all the other potential revolutions will almost certainly depend on that, it's not going to come from mining non renewable resources any more.
Re:Too bad for the "organic food" folks... (Score:1, Informative)
The problem is sustainability. The land can't support such dense yields in the same area forever; plants pull nutrients from the ground. If we continue as we are, much of our current farmland will turn to deserts.
Re:Misleading (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Bull (Score:5, Informative)
He's using the standard definition of "peak oil", you know when production rate hits its maximum. Which has exactly nothing to do with how much is in the ground - it's how much is being extracted.
So here's the chart: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS1&f=A [eia.gov]
It's seems pretty obvious that peak oil for the US was in 1970. Sure we may ramp up production in the future in which case that'll just be a local maxima and not the actual peak. But it has been 40 years so far...
Re:It may happen one day... (Score:5, Informative)
You are probably referring to Hubbert's Peak [wikipedia.org]. His prediction was for peak production in the US, and was mostly on target (which is admirable for a prediction 50 year ahead). The curve has been adapted to several regions, with correct predictions. The peak global production, using Hubbert's curve, is predicted for 2005, and it seems to have indeed ocurred [doe.gov].
Mind you, peak production isn't the same as "running out". There's still a lot of oil out there. It's just that now it's clear we must find an alternative, and we have a couple of decades left.
Re:Bull (Score:3, Informative)
It's simple. Take copper for example. Picking a nice easy round number just for demonstration, say we use 1Kg of copper per person per year, and we have 6.75Bln people on the planet. Unfortunately, if we average out all the copper trees to growing 1Kg of copper per tree per year, we see that we only have 4.5Bln copper trees. This is why we're having to roll out fiber optics for broadband instead of copper, because the copper trees are really tired. Why don't we just planet more copper trees? Well we are, but we don't have enough seeds. And so the cycle continues.
Hope this helps.
Re:Bull (Score:5, Informative)
The main problem is with what economists call externalities. [wikimedia.org] Waste byproducts, pollution, resource depletion, etc. are all negative externalities that aren't immediately reflected in the cost of a good or service. Policy decisions, though, such as pollution regulation, manufacturer takeback requirements, and so on can internalize those costs in the final selling price of a good or service.
This is where regulation meets the marketplace, and how proper regulations and policies can work together with market forces to drive sustainability. But, it does require forces outside the market (such as government regulation) to internalize those costs so that they get accounted for up front.
For example, I actually would be in favor of increased fuel taxes, with the money allocated directly to greenhouse gas abatement programs, whether it's planting tree farms or sequestering carbon by some other means, or converting power plants away from coal.
Re:Bull (Score:3, Informative)
The last time oil got so expensive as to spur major interest in oil shales & tars, it was between $100 and $130/bbl and the price of gas was spiralling past $4/gal. The resulting surge in the price of transportation drove one last stake into the heart of the US economy at the start of the "housing crisis" as it was then called.
Re:Regulation of births is needed. (Score:3, Informative)
But increasing affluence means more use of resources.
Re:Bull (Score:3, Informative)
Second law of thermodynamics; Learn it, Live it, Love it.
When you drop an egg on the ground, the raw materials that constituted the egg are not destroyed, but the egg is no longer useful. It would require a considerable amount of energy to reconstruct the egg into a useful condition. This is called ENTROPY.
Nature stores and makes use of energy in various forms, including fossil fuels, but also in the form of minerals etc-- Using these resources improperly destroys the resource faster than it is produced.
EG, it takes nature X years to produce a large tree; Cutting it down takes only a few minutes. Once the tree is used, you don't magically get a new tree from the resources after they have been processed. Those resources have to be broken down (requires energy), recirculated in the environment (requires energy), and reconstituted as a new tree by another seedling (requires lots of energy and time.)
In the meantime, humans are greedily hunting for energy sources to exploit. the exploitation of these energy sources causes another problem; The earth can only eliminate thermal waste (biproduct of entropy) at a maximum theoretical rate- (the rate it can radiate that heat into space as IR radiation)
Right now, "Global Warming" is a 2 factor beast-- the consumption of energy resources produces a biproduct that is energy intensive to recycle by mother nature, which also has the added effect of reducing the rate at which the earth expels waste heat into space. This has the net effect of causing the earth to heat up.
Now, if we couple this with some of the proposed solutions to the energy crisis (Space based solar power, Fusion energy, etc--) we end up creating NEW problems:
Space based power: We increase the amount of energy reaching the planet, and consequently increase the baseline thermal energy production of the planet. This will cause global warming faster than you can imagine. The earth's current temperature (sans global warming effects) is the result of an equilibrium of energy in VS energy out. Fucking with that causes the equilibrium to shift, so dont do it.
Having opinions before you actually look at numbers cause errors. Don't do it.
According to the first website I found on the topic [einsteinyear.org] the amount of energy humans is used is 1/6000th of the amount that the earth gets from the sun.
With any normal increase of the temperature of a black body, the amount of radiation will also increase (by the fourth power of the absolute temperature; the Stefan-Boltzmann law). The average temperature of the earth is somewhere in the 13C to 15C range (according to another quick search). Taking the upper number there (since that'll require the highest absolute increase), we have 288.15K. To radiate 1/6000 extra for this, we need a temperature increase of 0.012 degrees centigrade (0.0216 Farenheight). If we postulate that we would import one hundred times as much energy as we spend today, we would require a temperature increase of 1.11 degrees centigrade to radiate it. This is the same increase as we expect the *minimum* increase from present global warming to be; the estimate is (according to Wikipedia) 1.1C to 6.4C. With this, we could take in one hundred times as much energy for the same amount of warming (disregarding any effects of forcing through water vapor.) Because water vapor roughly doubles the effect of warming, this should probably be halved; it is still a significant improvement, don't you think?
I have no idea how quickly people can imagine global warning, but I'm sure it's faster than this.
Oh, and the same problem occurs with fusion power; it adds energy. As does using fossil fuels, except that adds energy twice: Once for using it, and then through the greenhouse effect (capturing more energy from the sun).
Re:Bull (Score:5, Informative)
Right now, "Global Warming" is a 2 factor beast-- the consumption of energy resources produces a biproduct that is energy intensive to recycle by mother nature, which also has the added effect of reducing the rate at which the earth expels waste heat into space. This has the net effect of causing the earth to heat up.
That's BS - the second "byproduct heat" is negligible. Computations on the back of a napkin:
Result: the heat created by the humans is at most 0.04% of what the Earth dissipates into space naturally.
Re:Bull (Score:1, Informative)
Keeping the air clean is a transaction, though (or rather a series of transactions). It requires exchanges of value (trade-offs). The positive and negative in externalities is not about some perceived social value; in that sense, economics, like any other serious scientific discipline, is value free. (Well, unless you're Paul Krugman.)
Using the word transaction was probably not the best; in economics, it has a meaning different from its common use.
From the Wikipedia article, you cited:
The negative in negative externality is not a value judgment in the sense of moral or ethical values (for which economics, like any scientific discipline, has none), but an assessment of increased cost (including lost profit or lost potential profit) from an action to which you are not party. A positive externality is decreased cost or increased profit from an action to which you are not party.
Some examples:
1) I run a café and someone just saw the Virgin Mary in a piece of toast, and now my café is full every day for three weeks; my positive externality is my competitors' negative externality.
2) The pious Marians in the previous example crowd out my regular customers and once they're gone, some of my previous regulars don't return, a positive externality for my competitors.
While the same action does not always have positive and negative externalities, and they do not in any sense balance, the same action, decision, or market influence can act as both a negative and positive externality.
Because of the political process though, the factory operator does not have control over the decision to pollute certain substances; he was not given that decision: the very definition of an externality; it most definitely is an increased cost and therefore a negative externality for him. I'm not saying he should have that decision; I'm saying he doesn't have the decision. It is external to him.
Re:Sigh, These TreeHuggers must need more $$ (Score:4, Informative)
You don't deal with many non-profits do you? Even middle-management at many non-profits earn a very healthy income, easily on par with anything the corporate world offers.
Let's see, the CEO of the WWF (the authors of the report) earns a whopping $465,427 [charitynavigator.org]. Now have a look at this list of CEO compensation by industry type [aflcio.org]. Can you see any under $1,000,000? How many over $10,000,000? They are certainly not on par with the WWF salaries.
That said, some of those executives you describe are directly responsible for the existence of non-profits. The money has to come from somewhere.
No, not the ones we are talking about. Do you really think that the mining industries are funding the climate advocate groups? No, I don't think so. Sure they have their own industry groups and think-tanks, but none of those could be called "tree huggers".
Re:Another low point (Score:3, Informative)
Exactly. The post is crap.
Re:Bull (Score:4, Informative)
Israel can grow crops with water amounts that makes everybody else blush with embarrassment.
Have they started using Palestinian blood then?
Israeli propaganda aside, you have to remember that Israel makes a practice of annexing orchards, houses, farms, etc.. and that's hardly a model for self-sufficiency. Not every nation in the world can demand lebensraum.
Israel diverts all of Palestinian Jordan River water and 87% of Palestinian ground water to the state of Israel proper and the illegal Jewish settlers. The remaining 13% of Palestinian ground water is distributed back to 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank.
Israel cuts off Palestinian access to water by destroying wells (Between 2000 and mid-2006, Israel destroyed 244 of Gaza's wells and destroyed 6.2 miles of culinary water lines); destroying all Palestinian pumps and ditches accessing the Jordan River; destroying cisterns and irrigation systems; preventing the construction of new water infrastructure; preventing the repair of out-dated infrastructure; preventing Palestinians from drilling new wells; and hindering access through 'security measures' such as roadblocks, closures, checkpoints, and the wall.
The route of Israel's security wall delineates the eastern boundary of high groundwater production from the Western Aquifer. The wall fences those areas of high water production into Israel, closing off Palestinian access to more than 95% of their groundwater resources, over 630 million cubic meters of water per year.
Since 1967, not one permit has been granted for the drilling of new Palestinian controlled wells in the largest and most productive of all the aquifer basins, the Western Aquifer.
Palestinians pay from four to twenty times more for water than Jewish settlers pay, but are restricted to 10 to 60 liters of water per day, less than the 100 liters-per-day minimum standard set by the World Health Organization. Jewish settlers enjoy from 274 to 450 liters of water per day.
Five thousand Jewish settlers living in the Jordan Valley consume the equivalent of 75% of the water used by the entire West Bank population of over 2.5 million Palestinians.
Crops grown in the fertile Jordan Valley of the West Bank, are grown in Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory.
http://bdsmovement.net/?q=node/519 [bdsmovement.net]
The Israeli military shoots unarmed farmers
http://palsolidarity.org/2010/06/12759/ [palsolidarity.org]
30% of Gaza's arable farmland, and some of it's most fertile, lies within the 'buffer zone'.
Farmers attempting to cultivate land in the 'buffer zone' are routinely met with barrages of live ammunition and occasional artillery shells.
Since 2007 Israel has also banned Gazan farmers from selling their crops abroad, where they might compete with Israeli produce
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11414.shtml [electronicintifada.net]
They are also facing further restrictions on the types and amounts of products they can grow.
Palestinians must obtain permits from Israel to grow crops. Permits are granted based on whether Palestinian crops compete with Israeli agricultural production.
http://icahdusa.org/download/10 [icahdusa.org]
Re:Bull (Score:4, Informative)
It's not about *quantity* of oil it's about *rate*. A lot of naysayers seem to think that shale and tar sands are just like Texas sweet crude, stick a straw in it and out it comes, but it's not. Shale is basically rock. It costs a lot of money and takes a lot of effort to get oil out of this shale, and when you do, you just can't extract it at a very high rate.
If you had infinite oil it wouldn't matter one bit if you could not extract it at a sufficient rate to feed the consumers of this oil.
To contrast the *rate* at which you can extract oil from tar sands and other euphemistically named "unconventional sources", consider this. The entirety of Canada's tar sands, with something like 1.7 trillion barrels of proven reserves, after decades of investment is producing at a rate less than Mexico's Cantarell field did at its peak. Cantarell field is just *0.1%* of the size. 1/1000th of the size.
Extracting from shales and tar sands is also highly polluting and energy intensive. For each barrel of oil energy you invest in, say, Saudi Arabia, you get about 30 barrels of oil back. For Canadian tar sands, one barrel of oil's worth of energy only yields 3 to 6 barrels of production. Shale is likely to be a lot lower if it can even make the break even point at all. If it can't break even there's no point even mining for it.
Re:Bull (Score:3, Informative)
The cellar doesn't have a government, thus a true free market solution can arise: the strongest economist slaughters and eats the rest one by one, preferably with good red wine - this is wine cellar, right? It would be barbarous to expect such civilized people to resort to cannibalism without wine.
This proves, once again, that the true nature of humanity can only be realized when the weak are not coddled by the socialistic monopoly on violence, but are required to be personally responsible for their own well-being.
According to the documentary "Atlas Shrugged", the only reason we don't have perpetual motion generators yet is because the horrible, oppressive persecution the rich and the powerful face in our society has forced them to withdraw from society. We are all going to die horribly, and deserve it for daring to tax CEOs.
Based on this, I theorize that if people make high enough offers for a single piece of bread I have, it should magically multiply and feed them all. Any opening bids? Come on, people: let's overcome world hunger through inflation!
I also wonder if the system could be automated. If I were to run two programs that constantly bid over the gasoline in my car's tank, would it refil by itself? And would the computer running these programs need to be physically present in the car, or could I run it on my home computer, violating thermodynamics on the background whenever I used my computer? And, coming to think of it, I could power the computer itself the same way! And I could even arrange cooling without fans through some kind of "heat credit" system!
All problems go away if you simply ignore them or insist that they were caused by government regulation. Rayndonomics - what a fascinating new branch of science!