Sunday 25 November 2012

How Will the World’s population die?




Of all the major trends, overshoot will bring , one of the most important is how the global human population will shrink to a sustainable level. this is assured as current population levels well exceed the Earth’s carrying capacity with only renewable resources available. The basic graph looks like this.

For us humans the declining carrying capacity has two parts;

Loss of non-renewables: Fossil fuels belong to this category, anything that requires them to access and ores deep in the ground, the main industrial materials in this category (recycling is a different matter). For agriculture the main loss is the relatively stable climate, other losses include fossil aquifers or deposits of Phosphates and other nutrients. Once this section of carrying capacity is lost it won’t be regenerated over anything but geological timeframes.

Loss of renewables: Soil fertility, fisheries and forests are the most common; this includes elements that can renew themselves over time,normally biological systems. However, once depleted many of these elements stop regenerating, examples  include the collapse of the North Atlantic Cod fishery and the deforestation by the Anasazi of Chaco valley (Collapse by Jared Diamond). Action can be taken to create renewable resources; reforestation, recycling of metals (renewal of stocks), building soil fertility, silviculture etc.

While the ultimate carrying capacity is variable and will fluctuate over time due to climate, ecological and cultural variables (consumption levels), it will be well below current population levels.

The important question now becomes how the world’s human population will decline. On a global scale this is likely to follow a smooth curve down, shown on the graph above, however what we care about for Australia is the local/regional of us and the Asia-Pacific change. Here’s an example of the differences between global (or continental in this case) and local.  2011 was for the US an average year in terms of rainfall over the entire nation, but when each state was looked at separately what was found was that more extremes had happened. Simply put there were more floods and droughts but when the entire nation was analysed they cancelled each other out.

As such there are two ends of the spectrum of population collapse; fast or slow. Dimitri Orlov describes the slow process in his book Reinventing Collapse as a changing in the birth/death ratio so a population exponentially decays (say 2-4%). This is a fairly peaceful and stable way for population to decline, if we have a choice we should aim for this. The fast way includes (and makes other fast collapse more likely) mass migration, plagues, wars, famines or other disasters. These can quickly change population levels and in the process cause great discord and chaos. We should try to avoid these events. The worst action we could take is to maintain current population levels as this just prolongs the collapse.
While the general trend will be decline, areas will experience population growth. The northern coast of Australia will likely see a boom as desperate refugees (climate, war or other) migrate there. This would then be followed by a crash as the lack of agricultural potential causes famines; the graph to the right shows such a process with reindeer. Some areas will keep a stable population; New Zealand is a good candidate for that., while Indonesia (among many others) is set for a dramatic reduction in population.

A note on time frames: if we use 300 years as a benchmark for the the massive population growth which is now going to be reversed, the decline will probably take 200-300 years overall and places will alternate between fast, slow collapse and points of stability (or even growth).

Population changes it will have dramatic effects on our economic, political and military systems. Anticipating and preparing could negate unnecessary misery and ease the many transitions we face

While its a bit late for any drastic changes to the outline, basic preparations could still help. Most of the standard response to overshoot (summed up as a mixture of using less resources and switching to more sustainable production/agriculture modes). Other options include slowing, then stopping, major international food trading while making food importers more self-sufficent, using organic agriculture or massive agricultural research into agriculture in third world countries.

Monday 19 November 2012

Time Scale of Collapse



In discussions of collapse, specifically if it will be a fast collapse or a slow decline of our current civilisation, what can be forgotten is that slow or fast are relative terms and change from varying viewpoints.

Heres a Terry Pratchett extract (Reaper Man) to illustrate

              ‘A city is alive. Supposing you were, a great slow giant, like a counting pine, and looked down at a city? You’d see buildings grow; you’d see attackers driven off; you’d see fires put out. You’d see the city was alive but you wouldn’t see people, because they’d move to fast.’

What looks fast to the counting pine above looks slow to us and what looks slow to it is a lifetime for us. Civilisations operate on such a timescale. If the collapse takes 3/5 the time it took for industrial civilisation to rise (300 years) then collapse would be 180 years – several lifetimes. What’s fast for a civilisation is still a slow process for us humans.

Then there’s all the other processes, trends and civilisations happening at the same time. After all Industrial civilisation was born within previous civilisations and people can live partly in multiple civilisations. The figure above for the life of Industrial civilisation (300 years) is wrong in an important sense; according to Lewis Munford’s Technics and Civilisation it was actually born in the early middle ages, which puts it at about 1000 years old. The last 300 years marks the time when it became the dominate part of civilisation and began impacting larger and larger segments of society. From this we can confidently say that an ecotechnic civilisation has already been born, possibly from the time of Augustine Mouchot (French pioneer of solar cooking and engines)  possibly earlier, and is slowly gaining the strength and pieces it needs. same with all the other civilisations that are forming in the twilight of Industrial civilisation.

As people and societies, slowly or quickly, drop out of Industrial civilisation they will enter into another; salvage, ecotechnic, herder, agrarian, nomadic, sailing or one of the many possible cultural civilisations around. This can be in steps or piece by piece e.g. A craftsmen who works salvage using charcoal to trade for industrial goods, the urban organic farmer living in an industrial city and other such halfway points.

This could easily mask the broad decline of Industrial civilisation and hide its eventual death. The driver for all these changes is overshoot as it weakens the dominate civilisation and allows new ones to compete in what has become an intensely Darwinian environment.

Sunday 11 November 2012

What is the Role of Governments?



Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs is a useful concept to understand the priorities a human being has, it isn’t perfect and the order can be shuffled somewhat. I am going to examine the basic goals of government based on this concepts view. So what are the foundational goals (equivalent to Physiological and Safety) of governments? Before questions of morality or righteousness can be asked, what does a government have to do?

The modern ideologies that need to be discarded to properly answer this question are many, free-trade,
Neo-liberalism, libertarian, objectivism etc. All say that government regulation is always bad and we should rely on the private sector for almost everything. Given that history shows otherwise, how long have governments been around? Several thousand years at least and still going strong, I can safely say these ideologies are missing important details. This isn’t to say that all government regulations are good and the private sector is useless, Soviet Russia is an example of rampant regulation, only that both need to be used and understood.

A government’s first job is survival, of both itself and its people (after all, the government is normally a part of the people) and this goal is fulfilled in multiple ways. The obvious way is the sheer physical survival of its people and this task involves a few parts. The provisioning of food and water, then distributing it to the population is an iconic form of this. Many of the original governments formed around this goal, organising waterworks, actually distributing food, looking after the granaries, setting up a market system and building the transport infrastructure required. Waterworks could take generations to build and then required careful management, provided by the local government (or bigger if part of a kingdom). The failure of governments to satisfy a society’s need for food and water is normally, and rightly so, greeted by social unrest, in the form of bread riots, rebellion etc.

Basic law and order is also another important role and to illustrate this I will use the Fayu, a New Guinean tribe, as an example. The Fayu used to number 2000 but reduced their populations to 400 within 1 generation due to revenge killings, using sharpened stakes and stone knives. Once a population reaches a certain density some form of conflict resolution is required and while other social structures (religion is one) can fulfil this role, to an extent, at any point Australia will be at a government will be needed for this. Justice can be carried out by any governmental form, from a council of elders to an invested judge.

Another aspect of survival is that of the group and its identity, this is important because government is an abstract concept, a system and a group of people. As a social construct its survival is directly linked to a societies cohesion and mental framework, destroy this and any government will cease to exist (the lose of legitimacy is the common form). This manifests in many ways and is normally tied to other social forms; state religion, controlled press, national identities etc.

These form the primary task of any government, the maintenance of internal survival.

The next step up is maintaining security (from other groups) and maintaining/improving infrastructure. Organising; defences, militia, armies, supply/communication lines etc is the main way to fulfil the first of these goals. The infrastructure part comes in many forms; roads, bridges, electricity grids, ports, railways, bureaucracy, hospitals etc and this is what allows economic integration and centralisation to occur, modern corporations are completely dependent on such infrastructure. This level isn’t strictly necessary but is required for the higher levels to be achieved.

These considerations are the first that must be asked to decide if a government is defective, before moral and ethical values are examined. The most brutal tyrannical government that fulfils these goals is better that the freest democracy that doesn’t (let alone the fact that the democracy would be quickly overrun by the tyranny in this case). Current governments cannot, especially in the face of collapse, just coast on their prestige of being democratic while ignoring these concerns. Doing so only imperils democracy and threatens either a collapse into feudalism (like the dark ages) or a rise in tyranny (another round of Hitlers and Mussolinis)

This process of governments failing in their basic duties has happened before; the rise of Hitler and his compatriots was no accident and helped by the political failure of his day. The current economic and political crisis’s are currently on the path for a repeat of this pattern as the current governments refuse to implement the solutions necessary (such as a default and rebuilding of their economies for the transition and Overshoot).

These basic levels of governance in the context of transition need to be figured out well before the question of democracy, morality or any of the other questions that are commonly asked of governments can be contemplated. The government systems that will survive overshoot and flourish after it need not be democratic or just, it is preferable but not necessary. If we wish for these types of governments to survive the basic support structures on which they rest must be secured or they will wither and fade away until a new form of government replaces them. 

Tuesday 6 November 2012

Biofuels



Biofuels are one of the many approaches being tried to solve peak oil, all the word means is fuels derived from organic matter (organic in this case means from living things, generally plants). To explain why we’re trying I have just pulled out a paragraph from my chemistry textbook from the chapter on biofuels (it’s a small chapter and they’ve just added it recently). I find it surprisingly honest about what’s happening for its source
   
Peak oil
‘Peak oil’ is the time when worldwide oil extraction can no longer keep up
with increasing demand.
The greatest amount of oil discovered in any one year was in 1964,
and since then the new reserves found have gone down in size each year.
Meanwhile demand for oil has increased as the world population has
increased and lifestyle expectations have risen. The actual timing of ‘peak
oil’ is debatable. We may be there now!
The situation provides motivation to devise renewable and sustainable
sources of the carbon compounds, both for fuels and to provide feedstock
for the organic chemical industry.

The statement above is mostly accurate but many of the realities of biofuels are ignored and need to be stated here.  It uses agriculture that generates chemical energy as a fuel rather than as food, it suffers from the limits and faults of any agricultural system used to produce them and will change along with the rest of the agricultural system. It also competes with food production, which limits the production levels. While alternatives to using food are available, most of them suffer drawbacks and would still require nutrient cycling to remain sustainable.

Now the dominant form of agriculture is the industrial from, which suffers from an acute case of unsustainability. So, any biofuels produced under the current model also suffers from a case of unsustainability. Of more concern is the fact that the current agriculture system uses vast quantities of fuel energy and so any biofuel production would first have to compensate for its own production. Since the fuel use of industrial agriculture is so high this means that most biofuels produced today have a low or nil EROEI. High EROEI biofuels are produced mostly by hand labour (e.g. ethanol from Brazil) and can reach about 10. This means that replacing current farming practices with the various organics modes before introducing major biofuel production is the better option, since the supporting system is figured out first and it can then be decided if it is worthwhile.

 Biofuels also can’t replace petroleum and other fossil fuels in both amounts and usage. This doesn’t make them worthless, just that their role will be highly limited and needs to be supported with other energy sources.

So what are the biofuels?

Solids: The oldest biofuels, traditionally wood, normally used for fire & cooking, there are currently efforts to increase the range of sources of solid biomass available for heat energy. Charcoal is a refined form of wood and was used extensively in metalworking and glassworks. It’s actually superior to coke but costs more and its increased use caused large scale deforestation across large areas in Europe and America. Any organic material can be used as a feedstock for the new types being invented and as long as proper nutrient cycling takes place long-term soil fertility won’t suffer. Raw biomass does create large amounts of pollution however, which limits desirability.          

While it will not easily power motor vehicles (except electric or trains), it can easily supply heat in stationary operations or electrical/mechanical power production. Due to its difficulty to transport (relative to liquid fuels), the main constraint on use will be its availability in the immediate area and rural areas should have the greatest access while cities will probably use it as a small supplementary energy source at best. For military use, mostly cooking, supplementary heat and a local source of electricity.

Biogas: The chemical of interest in biogas is methane, which is identical to natural gas. This allows the use of existing infrastructure of natural gas to be directly used with only 1-2 components added. The production of biogas, anaerobic digestion of biomass, has two products; a solid known as digestate, which can be used either as a fertilizer or as fuel (fertilizer will be the default option) and a mixture or methane, hydrogen, hydrogen sulphide (corrosive) and carbon monoxide gases. This is one of the easier biofuel production processes and is relatively simple and cheap (the Chinese are engaged in massive biogas programs). 

When upgraded (takes 3-6% of the energy in the gas to upgrade) it can power machinery without corroding it, hydrogen sulphide isn’t a very nice chemical. Compression into a liquid can allow easy use in vehicles and has been shown to be able to power trains (Sweden), this also makes it a candidate for military use. Like all biofuels, rural areas will have the greatest access but thanks to its ability to be transported easily by pipes a connection to the rural hinterland could allow a reasonable supply to cities; this also counts for the liquid biofuels.  

Fuel cells offer a highly efficient way of converting methane directly into electricity as opposed to using hydrogen.

Ethanol: otherwise known as alcohol and is made by yeast fermenting sugars anaerobically. Comes in a liquid form, which makes it directly usable in combustion engines; either as an additive or (in Brazil) as the fuel, some engines do need modifications through (it can melt plastics). By-products of production can be used a animal feed (high in protein) or fertilizer but carbon dioxide is also produced. Improvements, like GM bacteria that can use waste products or special breakdown process of plant cellulose, are happening and could help keep basic (limited) motorized transport running. Would most likely be produced in abundance by Queensland’s sugar cane crop, similar to Brazil’s approach. 

Isn’t as good on the engine as gasoline is, but it can be used for fire quite well. E.g. http://www.ozflame.com.au/. Most likely, it won’t be used as the primary combustion fuel (biodiesels are better for that) but it can be used as a solvent, as an antiseptic, chemical feedstock and as a drink.

 Biodiesel: Is produced by the breakdown of triglycerides by Tran esterification (breaks a lipid into 3 fatty acids and a glycerol). Energy density is close (about 9% lower) to petrodiesel but it does offer a higher cetane rating (combustion quality) and better lubricating qualities which helps offset its disadvantages.

Due to the higher energy densities and increased efficiencies of diesel, biodiesels use in heavy machinery, armoured fighting vehicles and ships is likely, if biofuels are used for the military it will most likely be the primary fuel used. Can also power aircraft and in rural areas would provide heavy muscle to add to the other energy sources available. As a sidenote, from the crushing of oil seeds a high protein and carbohydrate meal residue is produced which can be feed to livestock, this makes it more attractive for farms to produce the Biodiesel for themselves.  

Usage Levels and Nutrient Cycling: Two important questions remain about biofuels, how do they fit in the energy mix we’ll have during the transition and ecotechnic phases and how the nutrients used will be cycled back into the soil.

To understand how nutrient cycling will work I’ll list the elements of the fuels and where they come from. For ethanol the nutrient used is glucose which is made of Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen, all the fuels contain only this elements (if the fuel is pure) and Charcoal is only Carbon while biogas is Carbon and Hydrogen. In sugar production water is split in the chloroplasts by light (artificial photosynthesis is an attempt to copy this process) to form Hydrogen and Oxygen. The Carbon comes from the Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere around the plant and is used to form the backbone to which Hydrogen and Oxygen is attached. Therefore, as long as only the fuel is leaving the farm or local area the plants via the atmosphere can replace the nutrients. Of course, the soil normally gains these nutrients when the plants die and taking them away will make the soil poorer than it would otherwise be. The principal loses are organic carbon and a source of energy (that is what sugar is after all) for the soil organisms and in some way this needs to be compensated, leaving the land fallow could work and there are undoubtedly other approaches suited to each area, biochar could certainly compensate for the lowering of organic carbon levels.

The usage of biofuels will depend on the traits of other energy sources as much as its own traits. Given that wind and solar suffer from intermittency while biofuels can be used whenever you want (after production) then a compensatory role is likely. This also fits with their ease of storage relative to wind and solar, similar to granaries but for energy instead of food. Balancing the amount of food storage with energy storage (since it can be converted only one-way) will be tricky and a vital decision of any society that seeks to employ biofuels.

For storage, a good system could involve two levels. The first level could be considered the day to day use (or in this case year-to-year) and is for individual farmers and towns to supplement other energy sources. This would carry over from month to month and partially from year to year and provides the main usage for everyday life. The second level is made from the surplus from the first storage level and is used for the bigger regional/national energy expenditures. While the first level is used for yearly famines the second can be used for multi-year famines, in effect they allow no biofuels to be produced that year without losing energy, that the first level couldn’t cover. This second level would cover major infrastructure expansions/maintenance and such, major wars, festivals and other big energy expenditures.

Using them in this fashion also has another advantage, large amounts aren’t required. Since it is only acting as a backup energy source, the wind and sun will always be around, instead of a primary energy source the levels needed in stocks only need to be about a month or 2 supply and extra can be produced as needed. Since biofuel production above a certain level (above what waste can provide) will bite into food supplies the ability to only have a small amount is useful.