July 19th, 2007 by John
It seems that the early victims of climate change will be people in places like the Pacific islands and parts of Africa who have emitted very little in the way of greenhouse gas. Cathy Marks reports in The Independent:
“Veu Lesa, a 73-year-old villager in Tuvalu, does not need scientific reports to tell him that the sea is rising. The evidence is all around him. The beaches of his childhood are vanishing. The crops that used to feed his family have been poisoned by salt water. In April, he had to leave his home when a “king tide” flooded it, showering it with rocks and debris.
“For Tuvalu, a string of nine picturesque atolls and coral islands, global warming is not an abstract danger; it is a daily reality. The tiny South Pacific nation, only four metres above sea level at its highest point, may not exist in a few decades. Its people are already in flight; more than 4,000 live in New Zealand, and many of the remaining 10,500 are planning to join the exodus. Others, though, are determined to stay and try to fight the advancing waves.
“The outlook is bleak. A tidal gauge on the main atoll, Funafuti, suggests the sea level is climbing by 5.6mm a year, twice the average global rate predicted by the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
“There is not enough data yet to establish a definitive trend but that figure is alarming, implying a rise of more than half a metre in the next century. Most Tuvaluans live just one to two metres above sea level.
“Funafuti’s tranquil lagoon is adorned by a necklace of cream islets, each one tufted with dense vegetation. There used to be seven. Now there are six. The other one disappeared after a series of cyclones in the late 1990s. First, the palm trees were stripped off, then the sand, then the soil beneath. All that remains is a forlorn scrap of rubble, visible at low tide. It is an ominous indicator, in miniature, of what awaits Tuvalu’s larger, populated islands.
“Of all the low-lying nations menaced by global warming, little Tuvalu has been most vocal in the international arena. It recognised the threat early on, and successive governments have lobbied hard to alert the outside world to its predicament. The country - formerly one half of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, a British protectorate - joined the UN and the Commonwealth in order to raise its profile, and sent diplomats on globe-trotting missions.
“Six or seven years on, Tuvaluans concluded that the international community - particularly the big industrialised nations puffing vast quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - does not care. ‘They never listened when we asked for help,’ says Enate Evi, director of the Environment Department. ‘To be honest, I think they only care about themselves, and their economic advantage. That’s how it feels, sitting here’.”
Posted in Climate Change | 1 Comment »
July 18th, 2007 by John
Biofuel production, as it is done now, has a poor energy balance in that the amount of fossil fuel energy used to grow the crop, transport it and then turn it in to fuel can sometimes be almost as much as the energy in the biofuel.
The second question is if we should be turning food crops in to fuel when world reserve food stocks are running low just at the time when extreme weather events are causing food production problems in many areas.
Second generation biofuels are made from plant-derived waste such as straw, forestry waste or food waste. They can also use purposely grown crops or managed woodland. There are several companies working to produce enzymes cheap enough to make the process viable and the first commercial plants are now being built.
Today The Independent said:
“Short-term, the answer to the ‘food vs fuel’ debate is that the world needs to make tough choices: fossil fuel burning accounts for 75 to 85 per cent of global CO2 emissions; deforestation accounts for 15 to 25 per cent, so we can see where the imperative lies.
“The good news is that ’second generation’ and more innovative biofuels - on a 10-year timescale - pose less tough choices. Biofuels derived from straw, timber, manure, rice husks, agriwaste of any description, even sewage and methane from landfill waste - all could play a part with little detriment to food prices or rainforests. They also tend to be more fuel-efficient and cleaner; the US government claims a 91 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions. Add in hybrid technology in cars, higher agricultural productivity (Malthus was wrong, after all), and suddenly carbon neutrality seems almost achievable.
“If our mighty auto and oil industries bend themselves to that task, then the future can be bright, green and profitable”
The problem is that the timescale is too long if we want to keep CO2 levels down to acceptable levels at the same time as we put off oil and gas depletion. This really should have massive government spending to speed things along.
Posted in Solutions | No Comments »
The United States is a land with bountiful resources of all kinds of minerals, oil and gas reserves, agricultural land and best of all, a well educated, innovative and hard working people. In addition, it has the most powerful armed forces the world has ever seen. But, in my opinion, it is in a worse position to deal with the looming threats of climate change, oil and gas shortages, and Jihadist attacks then any developed country.
How can this be?
America has become incredibly wealthy by exploiting its resources, but most of all, by using lots and lots of energy from finite fossil fuels. In agriculture, Americans were way ahead of the rest of the world in turning oil calories in to food calories. While the rest of the world’s farmers were using the muscle power of horses, oxen and humans to till the land and harvest the crops before world war II, U.S. farmers were introducing tractors and harvesters to the huge field of the grain belt, where they were highly suited. This early mechanisation of farming freed up labour to work in industry. In industry too, Americans were leaders at using fossil energy to increase productivity, with highly mechanised factories using production line methods.
This mechanisation of farming, allowing most of the population to work in manufacturing or service industries is the key to prosperity. Even now, the poverty of a nation can usually be discovered by the proportion of it’s workers still employed in farming. In America today, despite being a big food exporter, only about 2% of the population work in agriculture. In many poor countries, over 75% still work in farming.
So why America the vulnerable?
Americans have become so expert at using fossil fuels to raise living standards that they have developed a system that depends on cheap plentiful and reliable supplies of oil and gas. Unreliable, scarce and very expensive oil and gas are no good.
America had massive reserves of oil and gas, and still does, but the system is now so hungry that about 22 million barrels of oil are used each and every day, about 25% of the world total, when domestic production is only about 7.5 million barrels per day and falling. Each American needs about twice as much oil as each European even though Europeans have a high standard of living. This means that the American system will collapse more easily and completely when the big oil shock comes.
Because petrol (gas) is not heavily taxed in the U.S. there has been no incentive to use fuel efficient cars or to live close to work and shopping. Public transport and trains are not preferred to cars and airplanes and cities are built in locations that would be intolerable without air-conditioned cars, homes and offices. In the best American tradition of free competition, food is produced intensively where the soil and climate are best for that crop and it is then trucked all over the U.S.
I have been on several bus tours to the U.S. and was surprised that close to some big cities there were no fields of potatoes or vegetables. In some areas there are no grazing cattle and then suddenly there are thousands all together on a few acres, crowding under sun shelters, in a district that has no obvious cropping to feed them. Plainly, all the feed is trucked in from where it’s cheapest.
The finite nature of oil, Peak Oil, middle east turmoil, terrorist attacks on oil installations, the possible establishment of an extreme Islamic state covering much of the middle east including nuclear Pakistan, are all threats that have been covered by other posts on this site.
America is so dependent on imported oil and gas that it is more vulnerable to collapse, especially in agriculture, when they are no longer easily available. Because of the events in Iraq and the possibility of nuclear weapons in Iran as well as those in a future radical Pakistan, it may not be easy to use U.S. military might to secure supplies.
Let’s hope that the next administration uses legislation and taxation to reduce dependence on imported oil. At the same time that would help in the battle against that other big threat-climate change.
Has anyone any ideas on how America would react to a severe and prolonged shortage of oil? Please leave a comment.
